BR  325  .05  1916 

O'Hare,  Patrick  F.,  1848- 

1926. 
The  facts  about  Luther 


Cbe  facts 
JIbotit  Eutber 


By 
Rt.  Rev.  Mons.  Patrick  F.  0*Hare,  LL.D. 

Recior  of  St.  Antonyms  Churchy  Brooklyn,  N.  Y. 

Author  of 
"Mass  Explained**  and   *' Devotion  to  Saint  Antony.*' 


Preface  by  the 

Rev.   Peter   Guilday,   Ph.D. 

Catholic  Unt'versityy  IVashington,  D.  C, 
Twenty -sixth  Thousand 


FREDERICK  PUSTET  &  CO. 

Publishers  to  the  Holy  Apostolic  See  and  the  Sacred 
Congregation  of  Rites 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 

52  Barclay  St.  436  Main  St. 


NIHIL  OBSTAT. 

Rev.  REMY  LAFORT,  S.  T.  D., 

Censor 


IMPRIMATUR. 

4-     JOHN  CARDINAL  FARLEY, 

Archbishop  of  Nenv  York, 


New  York,  July  4,  1916. 


Printed  in  U.  S.  A. 

ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Copyright.  1916 

IM  United  States  and  Grbat  Britain 

FREDERICK  PUSTET  4  CO. 

New  York  and  Cincinnati 


Pref 


ace 


IT  is  an  accepted  conclusion  nowadays  among  the 
best  students  of  the  Protestant  RebelHon  of  the 
sixteenth  century  that  there  are  "two  Luthers — the 
Luther  of  panegyric,  of  romance,  and  fiction,  and  the 
Luther  of  history  and  fact.  The  former  appears  in 
the  pulpit,  in  the  Sunday  school,  and  in  partisan  bio- 
graphies ;  the  latter  may  be  discovered  from  a  careful 
study  of  his  writings  and  those  of  his  contemporaries, 
but  above  all  from  his  private  letters,  of  which  former 
devotees  of  Luther  would  only  publish  what  they 
thought  to  his  credit,  garbling  or  suppressing  the  rest." 
These  words,  quoted  from  a  rare  little  tract  on  Luther, 
written  nearly  thirty  years  ago  by  a  Prelate  of  the 
Church,  who  was  one  of  the  foremost  Reformation 
scholars  of  that  day,  may  well  serve  as  the  keynote  of 
this  present  work  with  its  powerful  contrasts  between 
the  Luther  of  fact  and  the  Luther  of  fiction.  They 
also  sum  up  the  result  of  all  the  studies  made  in  the 
life  and  works  of  Martin  Luther  since  the  last  great 
international  celebration  of  1883 — the  four  hundredth 
anniversary  of  his  birth  at  Eisleben.  There  are  many 
w^ho  still  remember  the  interest  and  zeal  evidenced  by 
the  Protestant  churches  throughout  Christendom,  when 
that  fourth  centenary  was  given  a  world-wide  recogni- 
tion. It  was  a  celebration  with  far-reaching  effects  ;  with 
fatal  effects,  indeed,  for  the  hero-worship  so  dear  to 
Luther's  followers.  In  Germany,  especially,  scholars 
and  publishers  vied  with  one, another  in  acclaiming 
him  as  the  man  to  whom  the  modern  world  owed 
most,  if  not  all,  of  its  present  liberty.  He  was  hailed 
as  the  restorer  of  the  truer  evangelical  life,  as  the 
spiritual  liberator  of  the  human  race;  and  from  that 
time  down  to  the  present,  no  ordinary  reader  has  been 
able  to  keep  pace  with  the  output  of  Lutheran  liter- 
ature. 

Probably  no  man  ever  lived  about  whom  so  much 
has  been  written  as  Luther;  but  it  is  from  the  last 


notable  Luther  celebration  of  1883,  that  we  can  date 
the  foremost  works  which  have  appeared  on  the  sub- 
ject. To-day  no  important  source  on  Luther's  life 
and  works  remains  unpublished.  The  Weimar  Edition 
of  his  works — the  typical  edition,  began  to  appear  in 
1883.  Most  of  the  Protestant  authors,  from  whose 
works  Monsignor  O'Hare  takes  his  quotations, 
have  written  since  that  date — Kostlin,  Kawerau, 
Paulsen,  Kolde,  Hagen,  Hausrath,  Beard  and 
others,  have  all  written  under  the  impulse  of  the 
Luther  revival  of  thirty  odd  years  ago.  Throughout 
the  whole  period  of  this  activity,  the  Luther  of  fiction 
and  the  Luther  of  historic  fact  have  come  boldly  into 
conflict,  and  scholars  know  with  what  deplorable  re- 
sults for  the  heresiarch  of  Protestantism.  But  the 
ordinary  man-in-the-street,  for  whom  this  volume  is 
particularly  designed,  is  still  unaware  of  these  revela- 
tions. Throughout  the  whole  period  of  this  activity,  the 
Luther  of  fiction  has  been  relegated  to  the  realm  of 
the  unhistorical.  Scholars  can  no  longer  satisfy  them- 
selves with  the  general  platitude  that  the  greatest 
achievement  of  the  race  to  which  he  belonged  and  the 
most  important  event  in  history  is  the  Protestant 
Rebellion  of  the  sixteenth  centur}\  We  can  no  longer 
hold  in  the  face  of  what  modern  scholarship  has  brought 
to  light  since  1883  that  Luther's  rebellion  was  essen- 
tially the  beginning  of  a  new  religious  movement.  The 
Protestant  Rebellion  marked  no  new  stage  in  human 
progress ;  it  did  not  close  the  eyes  of  a  dying  medieval 
Church ;  it  marked  no  new  dawn  of  the  modern  era. 
Protestant  scholars  of  repute  no  longer  hold  out  to 
their  disciples  the  old  misconceptions  that  the  Rebel- 
lion in  Germany  secured  greater  purity  and  spirituality 
in  religion.  It  did  not  contribute,  as  we  have  been 
told  so  often,  to  the  elevation  of  the  laity  and  to  the 
advancement  of  woman.  It  did  not  fashion  a  separa- 
tion of  secular  from  ecclesiastical  power.  It  gave  no 
extraordinary  impulse  to  literature  or  to  science.  It 
did  not  establish  liberty  of  conscience.  In  a  word,  it 
had  nothing  in  its  principles  or  methods,  which  was  to 
ennoble  our  modern  civilization. 

These  truths  have  been  self-evident  to  scholars  the 
past  twenty-five  years.    Like  all  corporate  bodies  built 


on  error,  the  Lutheran  Church  of  the  si^tteenth  cen- 
tury has  fared  badly  under  the  piercing  light  of  mod- 
ern research,  and  Luther  himself  has  become  more 
and  more  remote  from  all  those  characteristics  of 
modem  civilization  to  which  his  followers  lay  claim 
as  the  legacy  of  his  apostasy.  Protestant  scholars  in 
America,  England,  and  Germany  have  made  plain  that 
Luther's  idea  of  God  is  repugnant  to  our  natural  feel- 
ings. Since  the  publication  of  Denifle's  works,  the 
suite  of  events  in  Luther's  apostasy  has  had  to  be 
changed ;  and  we  see  at  last  that  the  furthermost  point 
backwards  to  which  his  cleaveage  from  the  Church 
can  be  traced  is  not  opposition  to  the  Papacy  but  the 
false  idea  which  seems  to  have  haunted  him  into 
obsession — his  total  impotency  under  temptation.  It 
was  this  negation  of  the  moral  value  of  human  actions, 
this  denial  of  one's  ability  to  overcome  sin,  which  led 
to  his  famous  doctrine  on  the  worthlessness  of  good 
works.  The  only  hope  he  had  was  in  a  blind  reliance 
on  God,  whose  Son,  Jesus  Christ,  had  thrown  around 
him  the  cloak  of  His  own  merits.  From  this  starting- 
point,  it  was  facilis  descensus  Averni.  Opposition  to 
all  good  works,  and  in  particular  to  monastic  regula- 
tions and  to  Indulgences,  led  to  opposition  to  author- 
ity, episcopal  and  papal.  Germany  was  politically  ripe 
for  revolt  at  that  moment,  and  the  union  of  the  Empire 
and  the  Papacy  made  it  impossible  to  distinguish  the 
victims,  once  the  national  spirit  was  aroused.  That 
Luther  aided,  and  aided  powerfully,  in  this  opposition 
to  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  both  Church  and  State 
is  undeniable ;  but  what  Protestant  scholars  have  de- 
nied in  no  uncertain  terms  is  the  long  litany  of 
triumphs  accredited  to  the  Luther  of  fiction.  His 
greatest  work — the  translation  of  the  Bible  into  Ger- 
man— is  openly  called  a  plagiarism.  The  claim  that 
he  is  the  father  of  popular  education  is  ridiculed  by 
leading  Protestant  historians.  His  economic  views  are 
considered  retrogressive  even  for  his  own  time.  The 
assertion  that  he  is  the  founder  of  the  modern  State 
is  denied  categorically  by  his  latest  non-Catholic  bio- 
grapher, who  tells  us  that  he  preferred  despotism  to 
democracy,  and  that  he  never  doubted  the  right  and 
duty  of  the  State  to  persecute  for  heresy.    The  Luther 


of  fiction  is  being  more  and  more  obscured  by  the 
Luther  of  fact,  but  it  takes  time  for  the  conclusions 
of  scholars  to  reach  the  multitude,  and  with  very  little 
limitation  the  old  shibboleths  of  the  middle  nineteenth 
century  are  being  repeated  to-day  in  Lutheran  pulpits, 
Sunday-schools,  and  partisan  biographies. 

We  have  reached  another  century-mark  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Protestant  Church.  Four  hundred  years 
ago,  on  All  Saints'  Eve — the  Hallov^^  E'en  of  our  days 
— the  young  Professor  of  Sacred  Scripture  in  the 
University  of  Wittenberg  attached  ninety-five  proposi- 
tions, or  theses,  to  the  University  bulletin-board  on 
the  portals  of  the  old  Castle  Church  of  the  town. 
Historians  and  theologians,  both  Catholics  and  Pro- 
testants, have  viewed  that  act  in  many  ways.  To  some 
it  was  a  defiance  hurled  at  the  immoral  conditions  of 
Europe,  a  gage  thrown  down  at  last,  after  several  cen- 
turies of  spiritual  conflict,  for  Rome  to  pick  up  or  to 
be  branded  as  a  cowardly  antagonist  of  German  as- 
pirations, of  German  love  and  devotion  for  pure  doc- 
trine, for  pure  moral  living.  To  others,  it  was  only  an 
incident — an  incident,  it  is  true,  which  was  to  set 
Europe  ablaze  within  five  years — but  still  an  incident, 
which  might  have  been  seen  and  soon  forgotten,  had 
not  the  temporal  condition  of  Europe  been  ready  for 
the  outbreak  which  followed  it.  Both  siiles  admit  that 
the  Christian  faith  had  then  fallen  upon  evil  days,  but 
both  sides  have  since  torn  away  every  vestige  of  hero- 
worship  from  the  militant  figure  of  the  man  who  cen- 
tered Europe,  political  and  religious,  around  himself  at 
the  Diet  of  Worms,  three  years  afterwards.  Both 
sides  have  yielded  much  for  and  against  him  in  the 
discussions,  the  polemics,  the  attacks,  the  accusations, 
which  have  swirled  around  him  since.  The  Protestant 
religious  world,  although  deprived  of  valuable 
auxiliaries  in  the  Sturm  und  Drang  of  the  conflict 
which  is  now  throwing  the  world  into  confusion,  will 
not  allow  this  Fourth  Centenary  of  Luther's  Theses 
to  pass  without  an  attempt  to  rehabilitate  their  great 
hero,  despite  the  results  of  modern  scholarship. 

It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  were  it  not 
for  such  a  work  as  this,  the  general  reading  public — 
both   Catholic   and   Protestant — might   have   suffered 


this  rehabilitation  without  protest;  but  Monsignor 
O'Hare  has  thrown  a  briage  over  the  chasm  which  now 
separates  the  Luther  of  1917  from  the  Luther  of 
1883,  and  the  contrast  is  so  prominent  that  his  con- 
clusions cannot  be  ignored.  The  reader  is  brought  in 
these  pages  into  c,  close,  intimate  relation  with  Luther's 
friends  and  opponents,  and  every  statement  is  based 
on  the  most  reliable  authorities  in  the  Protestant  school 
of  historical  science.  The  whole  gamut  of  the  apos- 
tate's life  is  here  described  in  a  calm,  impartial  man- 
ner which  permits  no  gainsaying.  There  are  many 
hideous  scenes  in  Martin  Luther's  life;  there  are  scenes 
of  coarseness,  vulgarity,  obscenity  and  degrading  im- 
morality which  can  never  be  forgiven  because  of  a 
''rugged  peasant  nature."  The  man  stands  revealed 
as  the  very  opposite  of  all  that  Protestantism  has 
claimed  for  him.  But  the  reader  may  take  up  this 
work  with  the  assurance,  that  here  there  is  no  unfair 
attack  upon  the  Founder  of  Protestantism.  It  is  not 
with  a  spirit  of  bitterness  or  bigotry  that  Monsignor 
O'Hare  describes  the  real  Luther.  So  long  as  the 
Luther  of  fiction  exists  in  popular  Protestant  literature, 
there  can  be  no  common  friendly  ground  for  the  proper 
appraisal  of  the  Rebellion  of  15 17.  And  no  man, 
whether  he  be  a  Protestant  or  a  Catholic,  who  has  the 
love  of  Christ  in  his  heart,  can  look  on  with  indiffer- 
ence, when  there  is  question  of  an  irenic  state  of  mind 
en  religious  problems,  or  when  there  is  a  possibility  of 
a  union  between  the  two  leading  religions  of  the  West- 
ern world.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  religious  prob- 
lem to-day  is  still  the  Luther  Problem,  and  since  almost 
every  statement  of  those  religious  doctrines,  which  are 
opposed  to  Catholic  moral  teaching,  find  their  authori- 
zation in  the  theology  of  Martin  Luther,  every  Cath- 
olic should  acquaint  himself  with  the  life-story  of  the 
man,  whose  followers  can  never  explain  away  the 
anarchy  of  that  immoral  dogma:  "Be  a  sinner,  and 
sin  boldly ;  but  believe  more  boldly  still !" 

Peter  Guilday,  Ph.  D. 

Catholic  University  of  America, 
Washington,  D.  C. 
September  fifth,  19 16. 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS 

Chapter  Pages 

Preface 3-7 

I.    Luther — His  Friends  and  Oppo- 
nents       9-29 

11.    Luther  Before  His  Defection    .    .  30-  64 

HI.    Luther  and  Indulgences  ....  65-  98 

IV.     Luther  and  Justification  ....  99-136 

V.    Luther  on  the  Church  and  the 

Pope 137-182 

VI.    Luther  and  the  Bible 183-219 

VII.    Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  .  220-260 

VIII.    Luther  on  Free-Will  and  Liberty 

OF  Conscience 261-311 

IX.    Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer    ,  312-367 


CHAPTER  I. 
Luther:   His  Friends  and  Opponents. 

THIS  modest  volume  is  issued  to  present  to  the  pub- 
lic at  large  some  of  the  most  prominent  and  im- 
portant features  in  the  life  and  career  of  Martin 
Luther,  the  founder  of  Protestantism.  We  wish  to 
declare  in  the  beginning  that  this  little  work  makes  no 
pretention  to  either  originality  or  scholarship;  neither 
does  it  claim  to  set  forth  in  its  pages  anything  th'^.t  is 
not  already  well-known  and  fully  authenticated  in  the 
life  of  Luther  and  the  development  of  the  new  system 
of  religion  he  gave  to  the  world.  Abler  and  more  com- 
petent writers  have  long  since  covered  the  whole 
ground.  Learned  and  distinguished  historians  like 
Janssen,  Denifle,  Grisar,  and  many  others,  have  painted 
with  masterly  accuracy  the  real  picture  of  the  reformer 
from  material  supplied  for  the  most  part  by  his  own 
acknowledged  writings.  These  celebrated  authors  have 
practically  pronounced  the  last  word  on  the  protagonist 
and  champion  of  Protestantism,  and  there  seems  to  be 
slight  justification  for  the  publication  of  a  new  work 
on  the  old  subject. 

Whilst  we  recognize  all  this  to  be  true,  we  feel 
that  we  may  be  pardoned  for  attempting  to  tell  anew, 
but  in  greater  brevity  and  directness,  the  salient  and 
more  striking  features  connected  with  the  apostate 
monk  of  Wittenberg  and  his  religious  movement,  be- 
cause there  are  a  large  number  in  the  community,  who 
in  the  hurry  and  high  pressure  of  modern  life  have  not 
the  time  to  examine  the  ponderous  and  exhaustive 
volumes  of  the  authors  alluded  to  above,  and  who,  more- 
over, have  not  the  means  to  secure  these  works,  rnuch 
as  they  might  desire  to  do  so,  on  account  of  prohibitive 
prices.  Taking  all  this  into  consideration,  we  believe 
we  will  be  excused  for  intruding  on  a  field  that  has 
already  been  well  covered,  ard  for  presenting  to  the 
general  public  a  plain,  but  well-authenticated  sketch  of 


10  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  man  who  in  the  sixteenth  century  inaugurated  a 
movement  which  bears  the  name  of  "Reformation" 
and  caused  a  large  and  fearful  defection  from  the 
Church  of  which  he  was  a  member,  and  to  which  the 
bulk  of  mankind  adhered  all  through  the  centuries 
from  its  establishment  by  Jesus  Christ.  In  treating  of 
this  historical  character  whose  startling  influence  was 
exercised  on  his  own  country  and  on  the  world  at 
large,  we  have  no  intention  to  wound  the  convictions 
and  sensibilities  of  any  in  the  community  who  may 
disagree  with  us.  Our  aim  is  to  tell  the  truth  about 
the  standard-bearer  of  the  Reformation,  and  of  this 
no  one  should  be  afraid,  for  truth  and  virtue  triumph 
by  their  own  inherent  beauty  and  power.  The  poet 
aptly  sings : 

"Truth  hath  such  a  face  and  such  a  mien. 
As  to  be  loved  needs  only  to  be  seen." 

In  dealing  with  Luther  it  is  well  to  remember  that 
students  of  history  have  given  him  such  attention  as 
has  been  accorded  to  few  men  of  any  age,  and  about 
fewer  still  have  they  expressed  such  v/idely  divergent 
views.  His  friends  insist  that  he  was  a  model  of  virtue 
and  possessed  eminent  qualities  which  in  every  way 
made  him  worthy  of  his  position  as  a  religious  reformer, 
while  his  opponents  openly  denounce  him  and  in- 
sist that  in  his  own  day  he  was  known  as  a  ''trickster 
and  a  cheat,"  one  whose  titanic  pride,  unrestrained 
temper,  and  lack  of  personal  dignity  utterly  unfitted 
him  to  reform  the  Church  and  the  age. 

To  his  followers  the  name  and  memory  of  Luther 
are  objects  of  religious  veneration.  They  have  for  the 
last  four  centuries  surrounded  him  with  such  an  aura 
of  flattery  and  pedantry,  that  he  is  looked  upon  as  one 
of  the  glories  of  Germany,  nay,  the  foremost  figure  in 
their  Hall  of  Immortals.  By  dint  of  minatory  itera- 
tion, his  admirers  have  been  brought  to  believe  that 
"he  is  the  precious  gift  of  God  to  the  nation."  Lutheran 
writers  from  Mathesius  to  Kostlin  have  invariably  filled 
the  German  mind  with  all  that  reverent  love  could 
conjure  up  for  their  hero's  justification  and  exalta- 
tion.   To  call  in  question  the  powers  of  the  Reformer 


Luther  :  His  Friends  and  Opponents         11 

or  deny  the  divine  mission  of  the  Reformation  was 
ever  considered  blasphemous  and  unpatriotic. 

The  opponents  of  Luther,  on  the  contrary,  stoutly 
maintain  that  his  greatness  was  taken  on  trust  and  that 
the  writers  alluded  to  in  the  preceding  paragraph  have 
invariably,  with  a  fatuous  blindness  mistaken  for 
patriotism,  fed  and  nourished  the  German  mind,  not 
on  the  real  Luther,  but  on  a  Luther  glossed  over  and 
toned  down  with  respectful  admiration  and  conjured 
under  the  influence  of  partisan-colored  traditions  in- 
tended to  prevent  him  from  being  catalogued  in  his 
proper  page  in  the  world's  history.  Reverential  ten- 
derness keyed  to  its  highest  pitch  cannot,  however, 
they  claim,  eflface  the  clearly  etched  lineaments  of  the 
man  of  flesh  and  blood,  the  man  of  moods  and  im- 
pulses, of  angularities  and  idiosyncracies  which  dom- 
inated his  career  and  singled  him  out  as  a  destructive 
genius  unfitted  to  carry  out  any  kind  of  reformation 
either  in  Church  or  State. 

In  discussing  Luther  and  his  religious  movement 
we  feel  at  liberty  to  say  that  many,  both  in  the  ranks 
of  his  friends  and  of  his  opponents,  have  perhaps 
at  times  indulged  in  too  great  a  display  of  feeling 
and  exaggeration.  It  would  help  considerably  to  cool 
down  the  bitterness  aroused  among  all  parties  did  they 
honestly  endeavor  to  discover  for  themselves  the  find- 
ings and  conclusions  of  non-partisan  writers  on  the 
delicate  but  interesting  question.  Wiser  council 
and  juster  appreciation  would  inevitably  reward  the 
searchers  after  truth,  the  whole  truth  and  nothing  but 
the  truth.  Of  these  unbiased  writers,  many  of  whom 
are  Protestants,  there  is  no  scarcity.  They  have  been 
delving  into  the  pages  of  history  to  find  out  the  real 
Luther  and  they  have  not  been  afraid  to  tell  in  the  in- 
terest of  truth  what  sort  of  a  man  he  actually  was. 
These  scholarly  and  reliable  authors  assert  that  Luther 
unquestionably  possessed  certain  elements  of  greatness. 
They  admit  that  he  was  a  tireless  worker,  a  forceful 
writer,  a  powerful  preacher,  and  an  incomparable 
master  of  the  German  language.  They  credit  him  with 
a  keen  knowledge  of  human  nature  and  of  the  trend  of 


12  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  world  of  his  day.  They  allege,  moreover,  that  he  was 
capable  of  taking  advantage  ot  everything  that  favored 
his  schemes  of  yoking  to  his  own  chariot  all  the  forces 
that  were  then  at  work  to  injure  and  oppose  the  ancient 
and  time-honored  religion  of  Catholics.  But  whatever 
else  of  praise  these  writers  bestow  on  the  man,  it  is 
equally  clear  and  beyond  question  that  they  are  all 
agreed  in  declaring  that  Luther  possessed  a  violent, 
despotic  and  uncontrolled  nature.  Many  of  these 
writers,  although  Protestants  and  not  friendly  to  the 
Catholic  Church,  have  not  been  afraid  to  tell  their  co- 
religionists that  the  rights  Luther  assumed  to  himself 
in  the  matter  of  liberty  of  conscience,  he  unhesitatingly 
and  imperiously  denied  to  all  who  differed  from  him, 
as  many  specific  cases  overwhelmingly  confirm.  His 
will  and  his  alone,  they  declare,  he  dogmatically  set  up 
as  the  only  standard  he  wished  to  be  recognized,  fol- 
lowed, and  obeyed.  In  their  historical  investigations 
they  discovered  many  other  shortcomings  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  man  unbecoming  in  one  who  claimed  to 
be  a  reformer,  and  in  their  love  of  truth  and  real 
scholarship  they  have  honestly  acknowledged  that 
there  was  something  titanic,  unnatural  and  diabolical 
in  the  founder  of  Protestantism. 

One  of  these  fearless  writers  was  the  Protestant 
Professor  Seeberg  of  Berlin.  He  was  no  friend  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  but  his  deep  study  of  the  man 
and  his  movement  forced  him  to  say :  ''Luther  strode 
through  his  century  like  a  demon  crushing  under  his 
feet  what  a  thousand  years  had  venerated."  The  same 
author  further  remarks:  "In  him  dwelt  'The  Super- 
human,' or,  in  Neitzsche's  Philosophy,  the  'Ueber- 
mensch,'  who  dwells  'beyond  moral  good  and  evil.'  " 

In  November  1883  the  English  Protestant  Bishop 
Bewick  applied  to  Luther  the  epithets  "foul-mouthed" 
and  "scurrilous." 

In  the  December  "Century"  issued  in  1900,  Augus- 
tine Birrell,  a  distinguished  English  Protestant  writer, 
declared  that  "Luther  was  not  an  ideal  sponsor  of  a 
new  religion;  he  was  a  master  of  billingsgate  and  the 
least  saintly  of  men.    At  times,  in  reading  Luther,  one 


Luther  :  His  Friends  axd  Opponents         13 

is  drawn  to  say  to  him  what  Herrick  so  frankly  says 
of  himself; 

'Luther,  thou  art  too  coarse  to  love/ 

"Had  Luther  been  a  brave  soldier  of  fortune  his 
coarseness  might  have  passed  for  a  sign  of  the  times ; 
but  one  likes  leaders  of  religion  to  be  religious ;  and  it 
is  hard  to  reconcile  coarseness  and  self-will,  two  lead- 
ing; notes  of  Luther's  character,  with  even  rudimentary 
religion.  To  want  to  be  your  own  pope  is  a  sign  of  the 
heresiarch,  not  of  the  Christian." 

To  the  testimony  of  Professor  Seeberg  and  Mr. 
Birrell  we  desire  to  add  another  illustration  of  the 
change  which  has  come  over  the  minds  of  men  regard- 
ing the  German  reformer.  Licentiate  Braun,  in  a  con- 
tribution written  for  the  "Evangelische  Kirchenzeit- 
ung,"  March  30,  1913,  p.  195,  tells  in  all  honesty  and 
straight- forwardness,  how  with  strips  from  the  skin 
of  his  own  co-religionists  Protestant  theologians  have 
pieced  together  not  a  fictitious,  but  a  genuinely  reliable 
account  of  the  life  of  Luther.  This  able  Protestant 
theologian  writes  as  follows: 

"How  small  the  Reformer  has  become  according  to 
the  Luther  studies  of  our  own  Protestant  investigators ! 
How  his  merits  have  shrivelled  up !  We  believed  that 
we  owed  to  him  the  spirit  of  toleration  and  liberty  of 
conscience.  Not  in  the  least!  We  recognized  in  his 
translation  of  the  Bible  a  masterpiece  stamped  with  the 
impress  of  originality — we  may  be  happy  now  if  it  is 
not  plainly  called  a  'plagiarism !'  We  venerated  in  him 
the  father  of  the  popular  school  system — a  purely 
'fictitious  greatness'  which  we  have  no  right  to  claim 
for  him!  We  imagined  that  we  found  in  Luther's 
words  splendid  suggestions  for  a  rational  treatment  of 
poverty  and  that  a  return  to  him  would  bring  us  back 
to  the  true  principles  of  charity — but  the  laurels  do 
not  belong  to  him,  they  must  be  conceded  to  the  Cath- 
olic Church  !  We  were  dcl'p^lited  to  be  assured  that  this 
great  man  possessed  an  insight  into  national  economics 
marvelous  for  his  day — but  'unbiased'  investigation 
forces  the  confession  that  there  were  many  indications 
of  retrogressive  tendencies  in  his  economic  views!" 


14  The  Facts  About  Luther 

"Did  we  not  conceive  of  Luther  as  the  founder  of 
the  modern  State?  Yet  in  all  that  he  said  upon  this 
subject  there  was  nothing  of  any  value  which  was  at 
all  new;  as  for  the  rest,  by  making  the  king  an  'abso- 
lute Patriarch'  he  did  not  in  the  least  improve  upon  the 
coercive  measures  employed  by  the  theocracy  of  the 
Middle  Ages." 

"Just  think  of  it,  then,  all  these  conclusions  come  to 
us  from  the  pen  of  Protestant  theologians !  Reliable 
historians  give  book  and  page  for  them.  What  is  still 
more  amazing,  all  these  Protestant  historians  continue 
to  speak  of  Luther  in  tones  of  admiration,  in  spite  of 
the  admissions  which  a  'love  of  truth'  compels  them 
to  make.  Looking  upon  the  'results'  of  their  work  thus 
gathered  together,  we  cannot  help  asking  the  question: 
What,  then,  remains  of  Luther?" 

This  question,  remember,  is  put,  not  by  a  Catholic, 
but  by  an  eminent  Protestant  theologian.  It  is  an  im- 
portant question  and  deserves  serious  consideration. 
Who  will  answer  it?  The  bigot  and  the  preacher  of 
"The  Gospel  of  Hate"  resent  the  question  and  like  all 
enemies  of  truth  they  refuse  to  give  it  consideration. 
They  hate  the  light  and  close  their  eyes  to  its  illumina- 
tion. Many  of  them  hate  truth  as  a  business.  Their 
books  and  their  lectures  bring  them  reputation  or 
money.  Like  Judas,  they  ask,  ''What  will  you  give 
me  ?"  For  a  price  the  low,  the  vile,  the  false  feed  the 
fires  that  burn  in  the  hearts  of  certain  fanatics.  Unlike 
these  are  the  Seebergs,  the  Birrells  and  the  Brauns. 
They  are  not  afraid  of  the  truth.  They  sought  it  with 
unbiased  minds  and  once  they  discovered  it  they  boldly 
communicated  their  findings  to  the  world.  Ask  them 
the  question :  Who  and  what  Luther  really  was,  and 
their  answer  is  straight-forward,  direct  and  unhesitat- 
ing. They  tell  that  nothing  remains  but  an  unpleasant 
memory  of  the  man  who  divided  the  Church  of  God, 
and  who,  destitute  of  constructive  genius,  depraved  in 
manners  and  in  speech,  falsely  posed  as  a  reformer 
sent  by  God.  The  investigations  they  made  in  the  field 
of  reliable  history  convinced  them  that  the  father  of 
Protestantism  appeared  to  fill  the  world  with  light,  but 


Luther:  His  Friends  and  Opponents         i^ 

it  was  only  the  light  of  a  passing  meteor  consuming 
and  destroying  itself  in  its  fall.     To  the  enemies  of 
truth  these  scholarly  researches  are  most  embarrassing 
and  disappointing.     As  a  distinguished  writer  puts  it, 
"they  pluck  jewel  after  jewel   from  Luther's  crown 
and  make  the  praises  chanted  to  him  by  the  ranters  of 
all  times  sound  hollow  in  honest  ears  attuned  to  truth." 
All  impartial  history  proclaims  that  Luther  had  very 
few,  if  any,  of  the  qualifications  that  men  naturally 
expect  to  find  in  one  who  poses  as  a  religious  reformer. 
The  "Man  of  God,"  "the  supernatural  spirit,"  in  which 
role  he  is  represented  by  partisan  writers,  Luther  was 
only  in  romance  and  myth.    He  attempted  reformation 
and  ended  in  deformation.     Unfitted  for  the  work  he 
had  outlined  for  himself,  his  ungovernable  transports, 
riotous  proceedings,  angry  conflicts  and   intemperate 
controversies    frustrated    his    designs    at    every   turn. 
His  teaching,  like  his  behavior,  was  full  of  inconsist- 
encies, and  his  contempt  of  all  the  accepted  forms  of 
human  right  and  of  all  authority,  human  and  divine, 
could  not  but  result  in  lamentable  disaster.     His  wild 
pronouncements  wrecked  Germany,  wrecked  her  intel- 
lectually, morally,  politically.     The  havoc  wrought  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  by  him  is  almost  without  example 
in  history.    The  outcome  in  the  century  following  was 
that  the  nation  became  a  mere  geographical  term  and 
was  thrown  back  two  hundred  years  in  development, 
in  culture  and  progress.     History  presents  no  apology 
for  the  unbridled  jealousy,  fierce  antagonism,  and  un- 
remitting opposition  that  marked  the  career  of  this 
man  toward  the  Church  of  his  forefathers.    He  was  a 
revolutionist,  not  a  reformer.     The  true  reformer  re- 
stores society  to  its  primitive  purity ;  the  revolutionist 
violently   upsets   the   constitution   of    society,   putting 
something  else  in  its  place.  While  pretending  to  reform, 
he  wrote  and  preached  not  for  but  against  good  works, 
and  the  novel  teaching  was  eagerly  accepted  by  the 
unthinking  and  bore  those  awful  fruits  of  which  the 
historians  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
have  painted  the  sorrowful  picture.     He  rent  asunder 
the  unity  of  the  Church  till,  alongside  of  the  one  true 


16  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Church,  there  have  arisen  hundreds  of  warring  sects; 
nay,  there  are  those  who  extol  him  as  the  founder  of 
a  religion,  forgetting  that  this  is  his  greatest  shame, 
for,  if  he  founded  a  religion  it  is  not  the  Christian  re- 
ligion established  by  Christ  fifteen  hundred  years  be- 
fore. No  wonder  he  went  down  in  ignominious  defeat 
and  that  the  Church  he  unnecessarily  attacked  and 
relentlessly  endeavored  to  destroy  remained  as  the 
central  figure  of  all  Christendom  to  proclaim  alike  to 
the  humblest  peasant  and  the  greate::t  savant  its  Divine 
mission  and  heavenly  authority  to  teach  men  the  ways 
of  eternal  life. 

All  this  may  sound  very  strange,  and  may,  perhaps, 
shock  a  great  many  non-Catholics ;  but  they  must 
kindly  remember  that  they  were  taught  that  the  subject 
under  consideration  had  but  one  side,  and  that  inher- 
ited prejudices  prevented  them  from  examining  the 
facts  and  finding  the  truth  they  really  love.  The  light 
they  needed  was  kept  from  them  and  they  were  in- 
nocently led  to  believe  that  Luther  was  justified  in  his 
defection  from  the  Church  he  once  loved  and  de- 
fended, but  which  he  afterwards  disgraced  by  a  notori- 
ously wicked  and  scandalous  life.  They  heard  him 
praised  for  what  ignorant  men  called  his  "robust 
Christianity,"  which  was  akin  to  Judas's  betiTal  of  the 
Master,  and  they  believed  this  when  they  lauded  him 
as  an  ''apostle  of  liberty"  in  spite  of  the  fact,  as  history 
shows,  that  he  v/as  one  of  the  most  intolerant  of  men. 
They  have  heard  the  anti-Catholic  of  every  shade  of 
character  rake-up  the  muck  of  history,  vilify  the  clergy, 
hold  up  nuns  as  the  wickedest  of  women,  exploit  the 
Pope  as  "Anti-Christ"  and  the  "Man  of  Sin" ;  resort, 
in  a  word,  to  every  known  means  of  ridicule  and  mis- 
representation to  depict  the  spotless  Spouse  of  Christ 
as  the  "great  harlot  of  the  Apocalypse,"  "the  mother  of 
fornications  and  the  abominations  of  the  earth."  They 
have  heard  the  wild,  monstrous  and  even  impossible 
statements  of  the  lying  and  slanderous  in  the  com- 
munity, whose  only  aim  is  to  advance  the  nefarious 
and  diabolical  work  of  inflaming  the  passions  of  the 
rabble  and  to  keep  alive  the  blind,  prejudiced,  and  irra- 


Luther:  His  Friends  and  Opponents         17 

tional  discrimination  against  everything  Catholic.  The 
pity  of  it  all  is,  that,  in  this  day  of  enlightenment,  many 
who  would  be  ashamed  to  listen  to  professional  char- 
latans in  any  other  avocation  of  life,  will  think  that 
they  are  doing  a  "service  to  God"  by  giving  a  willing 
ear  and  swallowing  down  without  a  qualm  the  silly, 
senseless,  and  unwarranted  reproaches  which  unscru- 
pulous haranguers,  paid  hirelings,  and  vile  calumni- 
ators unblu shingly  and  without  the  vestige  of  proof 
urge  against  the  religion  which  Christ  established  for 
all  time  till  the  consummation  of  the  world,  and  which 
history  tells  has  civilized  the  peoples  and  the  nations. 
But,  whilst  this  is  all  true,  we  feel  that  the  most 
generous  allowance  must  be  made  for  the  Church's 
enemies  and  their  deluded  followers.  The  fact  is  they 
cannot  help  their  antagonism  and  distrust,  for  they 
have  been  brought  up  from  infancy  to  loathe  the  Cath- 
olic Church,  whose  histor}%  they  were  made  to  believe 
by  their  false  teachers,  was  distinguished  for  nothing 
save  bloodshed,  crime,  and  fraud.  Their  anti-Catholic 
views  and  prejudices  and  hostilities  had  their  origin  in 
the  so-called  Reformation  period,  and  since  that  time 
all  Protestant  "mankind  descending  by  ordinary  genera- 
tion" have  come  into  the  world  with  a  mentality  biased, 
perverted,  and  prejudiced.  They  and  their  fathers 
have  been  steeped  and  nurtured  in  opposition,  and  in 
most  cases  without  meaning  to  be  unjust  they  feel  in- 
stinctively a  strong  and  profound  antipathy  to  every- 
thing that  savors  of  Catholicity.  Ministers  and  lec- 
turers and  tracts,  every  channel  of  propagating  error, 
bigotry,  and  misrepresentation,  are  used  to  preserve, 
circulate  and  keep  alive  popular  hatred  and  distrust  of 
the  one  true  Church  of  Christ  which,  all  who  have  any 
sense  should  know,  is  indestructible.  How  men  in  the 
possession  of  their  wits  can  engage  in  the  useless  and 
vain  task  of  attempting  to  displace  and  destroy  a  God- 
founded  religion,  established  for  all  time  and  for  all 
Deoples,  surpasses  all  understanding.  The  fact  never- 
theless remains  that  many,  unfortunately  for  thern- 
!^elves,  are  obsessed  with  an  insane  hatred  of  Catholi- 
cism and  in  the  exuberance  of  an  enthusiasm  akin 


18  The  Facts  About  Luther 

to  that  of  a  Celsus,  a  Porphy^,  and  a  Julian,  they 
treat  the  pubHc  to  a  campaign  of  abuse  and  vilification 
of  the  Church  which  is  a  disgrace  to  themselves  and  a 
violation  of  all  Christian  teaching.  All  these  and  many 
other  influences  at  work  in  the  world  to  destroy  true 
Christianity  tend  to  bind  the  opponents  of  the  Church 
with  iron  bonds  to  their  present  inherited  convictions, 
and  hence  they  hate  the  Church  because  they  do  not 
know  her  in  all  her  beauty  and  truthfulness.  How 
could  it  be  otherwise  with  them  ?  Would  we  ourselves 
have  been  any  better  under  the  same  conditions  ? 

Catholics  expect  the  Church,  which  Christ  estab- 
lished and  organized  for  all  time,  to  be  misunderstood, 
maligned,  ill-treated,  pursued,  persecuted,  hated  by  the 
world.  Her  founder  put  the  mark  of  the  Cross  on  her 
when  He  said :  "If  they  have  persecuted  Me,  they  will 
also  persecute  you"  (St.  John  xv,  20).  In  every 
age  the  Catholic  Church,  which  is  the  only  one  of  the 
vast  number  of  pretending  claimants  to  Divine  origin 
of  which  Christ's  prediction  is  true,  has  had  to  suffer 
persecution  from  the  enemies  of  order  and  truth,  who, 
if  they  could,  would  wipe  her  from  the  face  of  the 
earth.  This,  however,  they  have  not  been  able  to  ac- 
complish, nor  will  they  be  able  at  any  future  time,  for 
God  ordained  the  Church  to  remain  forever  in  her 
integrity,  clothed  with  all  the  attributes  He  gave  her  in 
the  beginning.  Divinity  stamped  indestructibility  upon 
the  brow  of  the  Church,  and  though  destined  to  be 
assailed  always  she  will  never  be  overcome  by  her 
enemies.  Catholics  know  that  Christ  watches  over  the 
survival  of  the  Church,  and  hence,  in  this  day  when 
the  vast  army  of  the  ignorant  and  the  rebellious  rise 
up  to  check  her  development  and  stop  her  progress, 
they  fear  not,  happen  what  will,  for  they  are  confident 
that,  as  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow  and  the  next  day 
and  so  on  to  the  end  of  the  world,  so  will  the  Master 
ever  fulfill  His  promise  concerning  the  Church,  pre- 
serving her  amid  storm  and  sunshine  till  time  is  no 
more.  When  will  the  enemy  realize  that  it  is  too  late 
in  the  day  to  overthrow  the  Church  which  has  stood 


Luther:  His  Friends  and  Opponents        19 

the  test  of  centuries  and  which  has  been  accepted, 
loved  and  admired  by  the  best  minds  of  all  the  ages? 

Catholics  naturally  feel  indignant  at  the  vilification, 
abuse  and  misrepresentation  to  which  their  ancient  and 
world-wide  religion  is  constantly  subjected,  but  they 
are  charitable  and  lenient  in  their  judgment  towards 
all  who  wage  war  against  them.  They  are  considerate 
with  their  opponents  and  persecutors  because  they 
realize  that  these  are  victims  of  a  long  standing  and  in- 
herited prejudice,  intensified  by  a  lack  of  knowledge  of 
what  the  Catholic  Church  really  upholds  and  teaches. 
Even  as  the  Church's  Founder  prayed  the  Heavenly 
Father  to  forgive  those  who  nailed  Him  to  the  cross 
because  they  knew  not  what  they  did,  so  do  His  fol- 
lowers, with  malice  to  none  but  with  charity  to  all, 
pray  for  those  who  oppose  the  spread  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God  on  earth  because  they  do  not  realize  to  the  full 
that,  in  despising  the  Church,  they  despise  Him  who 
founded  her  to  be  the  light  of  the  world.  Most  of 
the  Church's  enemies  are  to  be  greatly  pitied,  for  they 
have  never  been  taught  the  significant  lesson  that  the 
man-made  system  of  religion  they  hold  or  adhere  to 
is  false,  an  offense  and  an  apostacy  in  the  eyes  of  God, 
who  despises  heresy  and  Who  warned  His  followers 
to  be  on  guard  against  every  teacher  not  commissioned 
by  Him  to  announce  Divine  truth.  Of  all  this  they  are 
unaware.  They  know  nothing  of  the  Church  they 
malign,  abuse  and  vilify.  They  are  ignorant  of  her 
history,  of  her  organization,  of  her  constitution,  of  her 
teaching,  of  her  mission  and  her  place  in  the  world. 
They  know  her  not,  and  many  of  them,  otherwise 
honest  but  nurtured  in  opposition,  are  led  to  hate  what 
with  divine  light  they  would  come  to  admire,  love, 
and  embrace. 

The  general  ignorance  that  prevails  in  regard  to  the 
Catholic  Church  is  most  regrettable.  This  ignorance, 
however,  is  only  surpassed  by  the  lack  of  knowledge 
manifested  by  the  maligners  of  the  Catholic  Chnrch 
regarding  their  own  peculiar  system  of  belief.  They 
are  ever  reac^y  to  criticise  the  Catholic  Church,  of  which 
they  know  little  or  nothing,  and  yet  when  they  are 


J^O  The  Facts  About  Luther 

asked  to  give  an  intelligent  account  of  their  own  sys- 
tem of  belief  they  are  unable  to  reply  in  such  a  way 
as  to  appeal  to  the  honest  searcher  after  truth.  Ask 
some  of  the  preachers  of  the  "Gospel  of  Hate"  to  de- 
scribe their  own  religion,  presuming,  of  course,  that 
they  have  a  religion.  Ask  them  to  give  you  the  real 
story  of  the  origin  of  the  word  and  the  meaning  of  the 
system  embodied  in  the  term  "Protestantism."  Ask 
them  to  tell  you  what  was  there  in  the  teaching  of 
Luther  that  demanded  his  expulsion  from  the  Catholic 
Church.  Ask  them  to  tell  you  of  the  pride  of  intellect 
which  caused  Luther  to  refuse  to  hear  and  submit  to 
the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ.  Ask  them  by  what  author- 
ity did  an  ex-communicated  man  like  Luther  establish 
a  system  of  religion  in  opposition  to  the  one  organized 
by  Christ  and  with  which  He  said  "He  would  remain 
all  days  even  to  the  consummation  of  the  world."  Ask 
them  to  tell  you  the  difference  between  Christ's  teach- 
ing and  that  of  Luther.  Ask  them  to  tell  you  what 
was  Luther's  conception  of  religion,  why  did  he^^decry 
the  necessity  of  good  works  and  declare  it  to  be  the 
right  of  every  man  to  interpret  the  Scriptures  accord- 
ing to  his  own  individual  conception.  Ask  them  to  tell 
you  why  did  Luther  one  day  proclaim  the  binding  force 
of  the  Commandments  and  the  next  declare  they  were 
not  obligatory  on  Christian  observance.  Ask  them  to 
tell  you  by  what  authority  did  Luther  approve  of 
adultery,  favor  concubinage  and  sanction  the  bigamy 
of  Philip  of  Hesse.  Ask  them  to  tell  you  why  Luther 
advocated  freedom  of  conscience  and  at  the  same  time 
compelled  all  to  submit  to  his  will  and  dictation.  Ask 
them  is  the  Protestantism  of  to-day  the  same  as  Luther 
fathered  and  what  are  the  changes  from  the  original 
teachings  it  has  undergone  during  the  last  four  hun- 
dred years.  Ask  them  to  tell  you  of  the  varied  exist- 
ence and  constantly  shifting  position  of  Protestantism, 
to  give  you  the  names  of  its  many  contending  bodies 
which  have  been  tossed  about  by  every  wind  of  relig- 
ious speculation  and  which  are  still  subject  to  ever- 
lasting driftins^.  Ask  them  to  point  out  to  you  the 
difference  noticeable  between  the  old  and  the  new 


Luther:  His  Friends  and  Opponents        21 

Protestantism.  Ask  them  could  they  certify  that  the 
original  opinions  of  the  sect  are  held  in  respect  in 
modern  times.  Ask  them  would  they  affirm  that  the 
father  of  Protestantism,  were  he  in  their  midst  to-day, 
set  the  seal  of  his  approbation  on  the  myriad  variations 
and  evolutions  which  have  affected  his  own  false  and 
individualistic  doctrinal  expositions.  Ask  them  how 
does  all  this  fit  in  with  the  teaching  of  St.  Paul,  the 
greatest  of  the  Church's  converts,  who,  putting  the 
query,  Is  Christ  divided  ?  replied  in  the  ever  memorable 
words:  "One  faith,  one  baptism,  one  Lord,  and  one 
Master  of  all." 

These  questions  are  pertinent  and  in  all  fairness 
they  should  be  answered  by  those  who  make  it  a  busi- 
ness to  wage  war  on  the  Mother  Church.  If  the  ene- 
mies of  the  Church  are  honest,  God-fearing  men  they 
will  not  shirk  their  bounden  duty  in  a  matter  so  grave 
and  important.  Until  they  have  settled  the  disorders 
and  contentions  everywhere  existing  in  their  own  Pro- 
testant households,  we  think  they  should  in  charity, 
cease  their  attacks  on  the  Church  which,  as  the  ages 
have  testified,  cannot  be  displaced  or  destroyed.  In 
the  meantime,  let  them  honestly  probe  the  issue  to  its 
depths  and  in  prayer  and  study  seek  the  truth  that 
frees,  vivifies,  and  saves.  Earnest  and  sincere  investi- 
gation will  make  it  surprisingly  evident  that  only  the 
shell  of  Protestantism  remains.  All  honest  inquiry 
will  show  that  its  origin  is  of  the  earth  and  decline  it 
must.  The  name  it  bears  designates  it  as  a  human 
institution  and  history  proves  that  it  is  nothing  more. 
From  its  thousands  of  deluded  followers  in  the  six- 
teenth, seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  we  see 
to-day  but  a  handful  left  to  testify  to  its  failure.  The 
newspapers  told  us  recently  that  the  exodus  of  Prus- 
sians from  the  ranks  of  the  State  Church  is  wholesale 
and  that  a  similar  defection  is  daily  going  on  in  Eng- 
land and  in  this  country.  Protestantism,  as  a  system 
of  religion,  is  undeniably  dying  out.  It  has  unfortu- 
nately prepared  the  way  for  the  monster  Agnosticism 
or  Rationalism  which  stares  us  to-day  in  all  its  horrible 
shapes  and  forms. 


22  The  Facts  About  Luther 

But  to  return  to  Luther.  What  about  him?  What 
do  the  vast  bulk  of  non-CathoHcs  know  about  the  man 
who  reviled  and  hated  and  cursed  the  Church  of  his 
fathers  more  than  any  other  mortal  ever  has  done? 
Must  not  the  great  majority  of  our  separated  brethren 
admit  they  know  absolutely  nothing  at  first  hand  about 
the  man?  Beyond  his  name  and  his  defection  from 
the  Mother  Church  they  are  in  ignorance  of  his  false 
doctrinal  views  and  depraved  manner  of  life.  This 
side  of  his  work  and  character  is  carefully  concealed 
from  their  vision,  and,  with  a  childlike  innocence  that 
disarms  wrath,  they  believe  their  lea-lers  and  guides  in 
religion  who  know  the  man  no  better  than  themselves 
when  in  pulpit  and  on  platform  they  hold  him  up  to 
view  wreathed  in  a  halo  of  glory  and  sanctity,  and 
proclaim  him  a  "Reformer  of  Christ's  Church,"  "an 
apostle  of  liberty,"  "an  enlightener  of  the  people,"  "a 
destroyer  of  the  Papacy,"  etc.,  etc.  Most  Protestants 
do  not  study  the  career  and  work  of  their  hero  inde- 
pendently for  themselves,  nor  determine  to  find  out 
the  truth  from  the  proper  sources,  and,  as  might  be 
expected,  it  is  easy  for  them,  congenial  and  pleasant, 
to  believe  their  false  guides  when  they  heap  unmerited 
titles  on  the  man,  who  more  than  any  before  or  since 
his  day  was  what  St.  Paul  designates  a  "lawless  one" 
and  a  contemner  of  constituted  authority.  Did  they 
read  reliable  historians  and  learn  something  of  his 
perverse  principles,  false  teaching,  unscrupulous  men- 
dacity, coarse  and  indecent  language,  they  would  not 
for  long  hold  his  memory  in  honor  and  continue  t'leir 
connection  with  the  false  system  of  religion  which  he 
founded  without  either  warrant  or  authority. 

It  is  no  difficult  matter,  as  all  educated  Protestants 
know,  to  show  that  the  reformation  Luther  contem- 
plated was  a  very  strange  one,  for  according  to  the 
open  avowal  of  its  author  it  led  to  the  utter  demoraliza- 
tion of  its  followers.  Almost  from  the  beginning  of 
his  movement  he  was  disgusted  on  account  of  the  little 
change  for  the  better  his  preachments  wrought  in  the 
(ives  of  his  adherents  and  with  each  succeeding  year, 
he  expressed  his  disappointment  in  the  bitterest  terms. 


Luther:  His  Friends  and  Opponents        23 

"Unfortunately,"  he  says,  "it  is  our  daily  experience, 
that  now  under  the  Gospel  (his)  the  people  entertain 
greater  and  bitterer  hatred  and  envy  and  are  worse 
with  their  avarice  and  money-grabbing  than  before 
under  the  Papacy."  (Walch  XIII,  2195.)  'The 
people  feel  they  are  free  from  the  bonds  and  fetters 
of  the  Pope,  but  now  they  want  to  get  rid  also  of  the 
Gospel  and  of  all  the  laws  of  God."  (Walch  XIV,  195. ) 
^'Everybody  thinks  that  Christian  liberty  and  licen- 
tiousness of  the  flesh  are  one  and  the  same  thing,  as  if 
now  everybody  was  allowed  to  do  what  he  wants." 
(Tischr.  i,  180.)  ^Townsfolk  and  peasants,  men  and 
women,  children  and  servants,  princes,  magistrates  and 
subjects,  are  all  going  to  the  devil."  (Erl.  14,  389.) 
"If  we  succeed  in  expelling  one  devil,  he  immediately  is 
replaced  by  seven  others  who  are  much  worse.  We 
can  then  expect  that  after  having  driven  away  the 
monks,  we  shall  see  arise  a  race  seven  times  worse 
than  the  former."  (Erl.  XXXVI,  411.)  "Avarice, 
usury,  debauchery,  drunkenness,  blasphemy,  lying  and 
cheating  are  far  more  prevalent  now  than  they  were 
under  the  Papacy.  This  state  of  morals  brings  general 
discredit  on  the  Gospel  and  its  preachers,  as  the  people 
say,  if  this  Gospel  were  true,  the  persons  professing  it 
would  be  more  pious."  (Erl.  I,  192.) 

We  could  fill  a  large  volume  with  Luther's  words 
describing  the  frightfiil  corruption  that  followed  upon 
the  announcement  of  his  new  gospel,  but  we  have  given 
enough  for  the  present  to  show  that  the  so-called  re- 
former was  not  unaware  of  the  practical  effect  on  the 
masses  in  his  own  day  of  his  wild  pronouncements. 
From  his  own  lips,  then,  we  learn  of  the  utter  failure 
of  his  so-called  reformation  movement.  What  else 
might  he  expect?  Did  he  not  sow  the  wind?  Why 
should  he  not  reap  the  whirlwind?  Wherein,  then, 
lies  a  reason  to  honor  this  destructive  genius,  and  why 
should  men  of  sense  continue  to  entrust  the  interests 
of  their  immortal  souls  to  his  self-assumed  leadership? 

It  is,  moreover,  no  difficult  matter,'  as  all  well  in- 
formed Protestants  know,  to  demonstrate  that  Luther, 


24  The  Facts  About  Luther 

German  as  he  was  to  the  core,  in  speaking  of  his  native 
land  used  the  vilest  and  most  brutal  language.     Many 
know  in  a  general  way  that  Luther  was  in  the  habit  of 
using  rather  hard  words,  to  put  it  mildly,  but  few  know 
how  far  he  was  capable  of  going.  He  was  reckless  to  the 
border  of  irresponsible  rashness,  blunt  to  the  exclusion 
of  every  qualm  of  delicacy,  audacious  to  the  scorn  of 
every  magnanimous  restraint,  coarse  beyond  the  power 
of    reproducible    Anglo-Saxon    and    lubricous    to    a 
degree  that  pales  Rabelaisian  foulness.    His  unbridled 
tongue  did  not  spare  even  his  own  country  and  his  own 
people.    In  speech  and  in  writing  he  unblushingly  de- 
scribed the  Teutonic  race  as  "brutes  and  pigs,"  and  he 
called  the  nation  "a  bestial  race,"  "a  sow,"  "a  de- 
bauched people."  "eiven  over  to  all  kinds  of  vice." 
Here  are  some  of  his  savings:     "We  profligate  Ger- 
mans are  abominable  hogs."    "You  pigs,  hounds,  ran- 
ters, you  irrational  asses!"    "Our  German  nation  are 
a  wild,  savage  nation,  half  devils,  half  men."    (Walch 
XX,  1014.  lOTS.  1633.)     In  many  pages  of  his  writ- 
ings he  complains  that  "the  German  peonle  are  seven 
times  worse  since  they  embraced  the  Reformation." 
When  one  ponders  over  the  description  Luther  gives 
of  his  native  land  and  its  people  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that^  there  existed  in  his  soul  the  faintest  spark  of 
patriotism  or  love  of  country.     Compare  his  language 
with  that  of  St.  Paul,  who  was  a  real  reformer,  and 
note  the  difference.  This  great  convert  and  distinguished 
Apostle,   speaking  of  those  he  won  to  Christ,   calls 
them  his  "dearly  beloved  brethren"  and  then  proclaims 
them  "my  joy  and  my  crown."    TPhil.  iv,  i.)     On  an- 
other occasion,  referring  to  the  fruits  of  his  apostolic 
labors,  he  says  to  the  Catholics  of  Thessalonica :  "You 
became  followers  of  us  and  of  the  Lord  ...  so  that  you 
were  made  a  pattern  to  all  that  believe  in  Macedonia 
and  in  Achaja."    (1.  Thess.  i,  6.  7.)    Which  of  these, 
thmk  you,  v/as  the  true  patriot  and  the  true  reformer? 
^  When   our  non-Catholic  brethren  thoroughly  con- 
si-^er  the  vile,   intemperate  and   disgusting   language 
which  v*^as  habitual  with  Luther  and  weigh  well  the 


Luther  :  His  Friends  and  Opponents         25 

opprobrious  names  he  hnried  at  the  race  of  his  fore- 
fathers, how  in  all  honesty  can  they  give  a  willing  ear 
to  the  praise  of  one  so  coarse  and  brutal  and  continue 
their  association  with  a  sect  which  its  own  founder, 
consumed  with  piiie  and  hate  and  despair,  pronounced 
a  lamentable  failure? 

There  are  riany  strict  non-Catholics  to-day,  who 
are,  as  a  rule,  honest,  and  moral  people.  God  forbid 
that  we  should  offend  or  cause  the  slightest  pain  to 
them,  but  in  the  interest  of  truth  we  beg  leave  to  re- 
mind them  that  it  is  high  time  for  them  to  know  that 
they  have  lived  as  regards  Luther  too  long  on  legends 
and  do  not  realize  what  sort  of  man  he  was.  Luther 
when  living  spared  not  Catholicity  nor  the  Papacy, 
To-day  many  of  his  adherents  are  close  imitators  of 
his  violence  and  opposition.  We  must  be  pardoned 
for  mildly  but  fearlessly  resenting  the  vilification  and 
misrepresentation  to  which  the  Mother  Church  has  for 
four  hundred  years  been  unnecessarily  subjected. 
Luther  was  the  cause  of  it  all  and  ignorance  among 
the  rank  and  file  of  his  sympathizers  has  played  a 
most  important  part  in  perpetuating  opposition  to  the 
one  true  Church  of  Christ. 

To  promote  charity  and  bring  about  a  better  under- 
standing among  all,  it  behooves  every  serious  man  to 
know  this  character  for  what  he  was  and  to  learn 
that  he  has  absolutely  no  claim  to  any  consideration 
as  a  heaven-commissioned  agent,  as  even  an  ordinary 
"reformer"  or  "spiritual  leader,"  or  as  in  any  respect 
a  man  above  and  ahead  of  the  frailties  of  his  age. 
Non-Catholics  should  in  all  fairness  read  carefully  for 
themselves  the  teachings  of  Luther,  when  their  eyes 
will  be  opened  to  the  true  state  of  things  and  they  will 
cease  their  opposition  to  the  Church  against  which  as 
yet  the  gates  of  hell  have  not  been  able  to  prevail. 
When  the  minds  of  men  are  opened  to  the  truth,  we 
assure  them  that  if  there  be  any  indignation  to  be 
vented,  it  will  not  be  spent  on  the  Catholic  Church,  but 
upon  the  man  who  contemned  the  authoritative  guid- 
ance of  the  religion  of  their  forefathers. 


26  The  Facts  About  Luther 

To  help  to  clear  the  way  for  a  better  understanding 
of  diflerences  we  intend  in  this  little  work  fairly  and 
honestly  to  disclose  some  of  the  more  important 
facts  in  the  religious  schism  which,  begun  by  Luther, 
has  proved  the  most  baneful  event  yet  known  in 
man's  history.  We  will  then  write  about  Luther, 
not  against  him.  We  will  quote  his  own  words.  If 
the  result  is  not  favorable  to  him,  the  fault  will  not  be 
ours.  We  wish  to  assure  our  rea^^ers  that  we  will  not 
allude  to  half  the  disparaging  things  of  the  so-called 
Reformation  and  the  German  people  that  were  uttered 
and  written  by  the  apostate  Saxon  monk  himself.  We 
hope  none  of  our  readers  will  shut  their  eyes  to  the 
truth  and  that  we  may  be  of  service  to  the  sincere  and 
earnest  to  help  them  to  discover  before  it  is  too  late 
the  Church  wherein  their  forefathers  found  rest,  peace, 
and  salvation.  That  Church  is  in  our  midst  to-day  and 
may  easily  be  discovered.  She  stands  as  of  old  on  the 
certainty  of  the  Divine  vera'^itv  and  can  no  more  be 
shaken  than  the  Throne  of  God  itself.  Men  like 
Luther.  Zwingle,  Calvin  and  others  appeared  upon  the 
field  of  battle  to  wage  war  against  this  Church,  but 
where  are  they  now;  where  are  their  congreeations ; 
where  are  their  sanctuaries?  Who  believes  their  doc- 
"trines  ?  Like  the  fragments  of  a  thousand  barks  richly 
laden  with  intellect  and  learning,  all  man-made  relie- 
ions  are  now  scattered  on  the  shores  of  error  and 
delusion,  while  the  Church  of  Truth  still  rides  the  waves 
in  hope,  in  strength,  and  in  security.  God  is  with  her 
and  she  cannot  perish.  Her  enemies  then  mieht  reflect 
with  profit  on  what  St.  John  savs  in  his  second  ereneral 
Epistle :  "Whosoever  revolteth  and  hath  not  the  doc- 
trine of  Christ,  hath  not  God." 

The  Catholic  Church  alone  has  that  doctrine  which 
unites  men  with  God.  She  was  organized  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  to  teach  and  preserve  all  thinsfs  what- 
soever Christ,  her  Founder,  had  commanded  for  the 
instruction  and  salvation  of  mankind  to  the  end  of  the 
world.  She  is  not  man's  work.  She  is  Christ's  work. 
She  is  His  Spouse,  His  mystical  body,  as  St.  Paul  tells 


Luther  :  His  Friends  and  Opponents        27 

us.  It  is  through  her  that  He  continues  to  communi- 
cate His  doctrine  to  men,  that  He  causes  them  to  live 
a  life  of  grace,  and  leads  them  to  their  eternal  happi- 
ness. He  founded  her  that  through  her  He  may  apply 
to  mankind  the  fruits  of  His  Redemption  to  the  end 
of  time.  Hence  it  follows  that  no  one  who  through 
his  own  fault  dies  out  of  the  Church  will  obtain  salva- 
tion. *'No  one,"  says  St.  Augustine,  "can  be  saved 
who  has  not  Christ  for  his  heaJ  and  no  one  can  have 
Christ  for  his  head  who  does  not  belong  to  His  body, 
the  Church."  These  words  were  spoken  long  before 
Luther  and  his  companions  in  revolt  appeared  on  the 
scene,  and  they  are  as  true  to-cay  as  when  they  were 
first  uttered.  The  command  of  Christ  to  hear  the 
Church  which  is  the  chief  work  of  His  power,  His 
wisdom  and  His  love  for  mankind,  is  imperative  and 
cannot  be  ignored  without  sulTering  exclusion  from 
the  inheritance  of  the  children  of  God.  The  voice  of 
the  Good  Shepherd  and  not  that  of  the  hireling  must 
be  heard,  if  salvation  is  to  be  secured.  Those  who 
refuse  to  receive  the  true  Christian  doctrine,  and  to 
enter  the  Church,  v/hich  preaches  that  doctrine  in  its 
entirety,  should  ponder  well  the  words  of  St.  Paul 
when  he  says,  "And  though  we,  or  an  angel  from 
heaven,  preach  a  Gospel  to  you,  besides  that  which  we 
have  preached  to  you,  let  him  be  anathem.a.  H  anyone 
preach  to  you  a  Gospel  besides  that  which  you  have 
received,  let  him  be  anathema."  And  again  in  his 
Epistle  to  Titus  he  says :  "A  man  that  is  a  heretic  after 
the  first  and  second  admonition,  avoid.  Knowing  that 
he,  that  is  such  a  one,  is  subverted,  and  sinneth,  being 
condemned  by  his  own  judgment." 

Few  men  nowadays  hate  the  Church  as  fiercely  and 
intensely  as  St.  Paul  did  before  the  grace  of  God 
touched  his  heart  and  led  him  into  her  bosom.  That 
same  grace  is  ever  ready  to  be  imparted  to  the  humble, 
sincere,  earnest  inquirer  after  Divine  truth.  No  pre- 
text, however  specious,  should  deter  men  from  acquir- 
ing a  full  and  connected  knowledge  of  God's  revela- 
tion and  enjoying  that  profound  peace  which  springs 


as  The  Facts  About  Luther 

from  the  conscious  possession  of  the  whole,  complete, 
and  fixed  truth  as  it  is  in  Christ  Jesus  and  in  His 
Church.  The  distorted,  ever-varying,  and  changeable 
man-made  religions  of  Luther,  Calvin,  Henry  VHI, 
Knox,  Fox,  Wesley,  Smith,  Dowie,  Eddy,  and  innu- 
merable others,  can  never  take  the  place  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church  established  by  God  Incarnate  in  Christ. 
In  it  alone  is  infallible  truth,  true  life,  and  certain 
salvation.  In  asking  men,  who  are  ''tossed  to  and  fro 
by  every  wind  of  doctrine,"  to  exchange  their  opinions 
for  certitude,  their  dissensions  for  unity,  their  errors 
for  truth,  the  Church  is  only  fulfilling  her  Divine  mis- 
sion and  endeavoring  to  realize  the  prayer  of  her 
Founder  that  there  may  be  but  one  faith,  one  baptism 
and  one  shepherd  of  souls.  Fail  not,  then,  we  beseech 
you,  to  listen  to  her  voice,  investigate  her  teachings 
and  accept  her  authority  here  and  now,  so  that  you 
may  enjoy,  "the  peace  that  passeth  all  understanding" 
and  partake  of  the  Bread  of  Life. 

It  is  certainly  high  time  to  discern  the  tactics  of 
the  wolves  in  sheep's  clothing  and  have  sense  and  in- 
tellect enough  to  see  the  sham  and  the  fraud  of  men- 
made  brands  of  religion  with  their  multitudinous  divi- 
sions, their  contradictions,  and  their  lies.  The  slime- 
vending,  mud-slinging,  vile  detractors  may  try  to  hide 
the  sham  and  the  fraud  of  their  unstable  beliefs  by 
well-planned  and  shameless  schemes  of  attack  on  the 
Spouse  of  Christ,  but  the  intelligent  in  the  community, 
exercising  sound  judgment  and  viewing  the  contra- 
dictions and  divisions  of  the  enemy  from  the  stand- 
point of  truth,  which  they  realize  can  never  contradict 
itself,  consider  their  efforts  as  a  huge  joke  in  presence 
of  the  Divinely  established,  heaven-united  Church  of 
all  ages  and  of  all  peoples.  Bigots  come  and  go ;  they 
make  a  great  splurge  and  bluster  temporarily  with 
their  campaigns  of  calumny  and  vilification,  but  the 
Catholic  Church,  because  she  is  the  One  established  by 
Jesus  Christ,  continues  on  in  her  heavenly  mission  in 
spite  of  the  puny  weaklings  who  endeavor  to  stop  her 
progress.    The  Mother  Church  counts  not  her  numbers 


Luther  :  His  Friends  and  Opponents        39 

by  men,  but  by  time  alone.  She  has  seen  centuries 
and  will  see  more,  not  changing  one  jot  in  the  future, 
but  still  standing  and  teaching  as  she  does  to-day.  She 
will  live  to  bury  all  her  misguided  enemies.  She  is  of 
God  and  cannot  be  downed  or  displaced  by  men  no 
matter  what  may  be  their  numbers,  their  influence,  or 
their  power.  "Against  her,"  Christ  declared,  "the 
gates  of  hell  shall  never  prevail." 


CHAPTER  11. 
Luther  Before  His  Defection. 

THE  subject  of  these  papers  was  born  at  Eisleben, 
in  Germany,  on  the  night  of  the  loth  of  Novem- 
ber, 1483,  about  forty-five  years  after  Guttenberg  in- 
vented the  printing  press,  and  nine  years  before  Co- 
himbus  discovered  America.  At  one  end  of  a  narrow 
street  in  this  little  town  noted  for  its  high-roofed,  red- 
tiled  houses,  or  as  Barbour  described  it,  "at  a  meeting 
of  three  streets,  with  a  little  garden  beside  it,  as  became 
the  place  they  say  it  was — an  inn — stands  the  house 
where  Luther  was  born.  Over  the  door  there  is  a  head 
of  him  in  stone  with  a  commemorative  inscription 
carved  round  it.  You  enter  the  first  room  to  the  left 
and  stand  where  he  was  born.  It  is  a  largish  room, 
day  and  night  room  it  was,  one  would  think,  in  the  inn 
time."  The  old  house  was  partly  destroyed  by  fire  and 
rebuilt  in  the  seventeenth  century.  Here  in  Eisleben 
Luther  first  saw  the  light  of  day  and  here  he  came  to 
close  his  earthly  career,  his  demise  occuring  February 
18,  1546.  Visitors  to  the  little  town  are  shown  both 
house  of  birth  and  house  of  death. 

On  the  day  following  the  birth  of  the  little  stranger, 
he  was  brought  to  St.  Peter's  Church,  where  he  was 
baptized  and  given  the  name  of  Martin  in  honor  of  the 
saint  whose  feast  it  was.  The  font  at  which  the 
waters  of  baptism  were  poured  on  his  head  to  make 
him  a  Christian  is  still  preserved  and  may  be  inspected 
by  the  visitor.  His  father  was  named  John  Liider, 
which  was  later  on  changed  to  Luther,  and  his  mother 
Margaret  Ziegler.  The  father  came  of  peasant  stock, 
and  the  mother  was  of  the  burgher  class  from  the 
neighboring  town  of  Eisenach,  and  as  such  held  a 
higher  rank  in  the  community  than  her  husband.  Some 
writers  have  endeavored  to  give  the  parents  a  noble 
origin,  but  the  claim  cannot  be  sustained.  Luther  said 
to  Melanchthon  in  after  years :    *T  am  a  peasant's  son. 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  31 

My  father,  my  grandfather,  all  my  ancestors  were 
genuine  peasants.  My  father  was  a  poor  miner."  At 
times,  when  he  referred  to  his  humble  origin,  he  de- 
clared with  much  force  that  ''there  is  as  little  sense  in 
boasting  of  one's  ancestry  as  in  the  devil  priding  him- 
self on  his  angelic  lineage."  Both  parents  were,  ac- 
cording to  the  Swiss  Kessler,  "spare,  short  and  dark 
complexioned."  The  father  was  a  rugged,  stern,  iras- 
cible character  and  the  mother,  according  to  Melanch- 
thon,  was  conspicuous  for  "modesty,  the  fear  of  God 
and  prayerfulness."  They  were  a  sturdy  couple,  am- 
bitious for  their  own  and  their  children's  advancement, 
and  lived  to  a  ripe  old  age. 

The  original  home  of  the  Luther  family  was  in 
Morha,  a  little  township  situated  on  the  northwest 
corner  of  the  Thuringian  Forest  and  a  few  miles  to 
the  south  of  Eisenach.  In  this  district  a  large  number 
of  the  inhabitants  bore  the  name  of  Luther,  As  late  as 
1901,  six  families  still  belonged  to  the  Luthers.  Morha 
is  up  to  the  present  a  tiny  hamlet  with  about  six  hun- 
dred inhabitants.  It  has  not  changed  much  in  the  pro- 
cess of  time.  In  the  olden  days  it  was  so  unimportant 
as  not  to  merit  mention  on  the  map.  Then  it  consisted 
of  a  small  collection  of  seventy  or  eighty  detached 
dwellings  of  a  primitive  character  and  mostly  of  ad- 
joining farm  yards.  With  the  exception  of  a  solitary 
carpenter  and  shoemaker,  both  of  whom  seldom  had 
occasion  to  ply  their  trades,  the  few  hundred  inhabit- 
ants were  mostly  wood  cutters,  farmers  and  workers 
in  the  slate  mines  of  the  district.  In  this  town  Luther's 
father,  like  many  of  his  neighbors,  owned  and  cul- 
tivated a  small  farm.  He  worked  and  struggled  against 
great  odds  to  eke  out  a  frugal  livelihood.  The  pros- 
pects for  worldly  advancement  were  far  from  encour- 
aging to  his  ambitious  disposition,  yet  he  loved  the 
place  because  from  time  immemorial  it  was  the  home 
of  his  ancestors.  He  was  not  destined,  however,  to 
remain  for  long  with  his  kith  and  kin.  Shortly  after 
his  marriage  with  Margaret  Ziegler  we  find  him  abrupt- 
ly abandoning  his  small  holding  in  the  little  peas- 
ant tov/nship  and  hurriedly  seeking  a  new  home  and  a 


82  The  Facts  About  Luther 

new  occupation  four  score  miles  away  in  another 
hamlet  where  his  first  child  was  born.  Ortmann,  in 
a  work  which  deals  in  a  chronological  study  of  the 
Luthers  and  which  is  not  unknown  to  students,  asks: 
*'What  could  have  been  the  cause  which  induced  John 
Luther  to  take  such  a  step  ^  To  suddenly  decamp  with 
his  wife,  too,  be  it  remembered,  far  advanced  in  preg- 
nancy, to  quit  and  utterly  abandon  the  place  of  his 
birth,  the  home  of  his  childhood  and  the  site  of  all  his 
belongings  ?" 

Luther's  admirers  have  endeavored  to  answer  the 
unpleasant  question,  but  all  the  explanations  made, 
and  which  did  service  for  a  time,  rest  on  such  a  pre- 
carious basis  as  to  be  unworthy  of  scholarly  accept- 
ance. That  there  was  a  cause,  other  than  such  as  is 
ordinarily  assigned,  for  John  Luther's  sudden  depar- 
ture from  Morha  is  certain,  and  substantiated  by  docu- 
mentary^ evidence.  Henry  Mayhew,  a  man  of  dis- 
tinguished 1-terary  attainments  and  best  known  as  one 
of  the  Mayhew  brothers  who  founded  London  Punch, 
made  Luther  the  subject  of  a  close,  careful,  critical 
study.  In  an  interesting  work  ablished  in  London  he 
treats  of  the  question  under  consideration  and  declares 
John  Luther's  departure  from  Morha  was  a  "flight," 
and  he  further  adds,  "men  do  not  fly  from  their  homes 
except  on  occasions  of  the  greatest  urgency." 

"The  simple  fact,  then,"  according  to  Mr.  Mayhew, 
"would  appear  to  be  that  John  Luther — as  Martin 
Michaelis  tells  us  in  his  description  of  the  mines  and 
smelting  houses  at  Kupfersuhl,  a  work  which  was  first 
published  in  the  year  1702 — Martin's  father,  had,  in  a 
dispute  stricken  a  herdsman  dead  to  the  earth,  by 
means  of  a  horse  bridle,  which  he  happened  to  have  in 
his  hand  at  the  time  and  was  thereupon  forced  to 
abscond  from  the  officers  of  justice  as  hurriedly  as  he 
could." 

"This  misfortune  of  John  Luther,"  Ortmann  says, 
"lives  still  in  the  minds  of  the  Morha  peasantry.  The 
villagers  there  tell  you  not  only  the  same  tale,  but  they 
show  you  the  very  spot — the  field  in  which  the  tragedy 
occured" 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  S3 

Mr.  Mayhew  made  a  special  journey  to  Morha  in 
the  last  century  and  spent  two  weeks  there  with  the 
object  of  probing  the  correctness  of  Ortmann's  state- 
ment. He  was  a  staunch  Protestant  and  an  enthusi- 
astic admirer  of  Luther,  but  withal,  honest,  fearless 
and  careful.  With  method  in  his  design  he  made 
searching  inquiries  concerning  the  local  tradition  in  all 
directions  and  questioned  and  cross-examined  old  and 
young  in  the  locality.  He  found  invariably  every  per- 
son knew  the  same  story  and  all  could  point  out  the 
identical  spot  where  the  murder  was  committed.  "All 
the  Morha  folk,"  he  says,  "had  had  the  tale  told  them 
by  their  grandfathers  and  they  had  it  from  their  grand- 
fathers before  them."  The  story  was  so  commonly 
and  unquestionably  accepted,  that  he  was  forced  to 
admit  its  credibility.  "Sum  up  all  these  matters,"  is 
his  conclusion,  "and  a  mass  of  evidence  is  cumulated 
upon  which  surely  no  twelve  common  jur3^men  in  their 
common  senses  would  hesitate  to  bring  in  a  verdict  of 
—Guilty." 

The  charge  of  John  Luther's  homicide  was  not  a 
recent  tradition  but  a  charge  made  in  Luther's  own 
lifetime.  George  Wicel,  who  in  the  estimation  of  the 
Reformer  was  "a  very  learned  and  capable  man,"  fir^t 
called  Luther's  father  a  homicide,  and  that  at  three 
several  times,  in  1535,  1537  and  1565,  and,  moreover, 
in  public  print.  It  is  recorded  that  on  one  occasion 
Justus  Jonas  assailed  the  integrity  of  the  father  of 
Wicel.  The  later  resented  the  charge  as  totally  ir- 
relevant to  the  case  under  consideration,  and  declared 
that  if  such  an  argument  possessed  any  validity,  "he 
could  call  the  father  of  your  Luther  a  homicide." 
Luther  and  his  friends  never  denied  the  statement. 
According  to  Karl  Seidemann,  an  expert  on  Luther, 
"the  testimony  of  Wicel  may  be  taken  as  settling  def- 
initely the  constantly  occuring  dispute  on  the  subject." 
Fr.  Ganss  in  dealing  with  this  question  conckr'es  a 
learned  contribution  to  the  American  Catholic  Quar- 
terly Review  with  an  observation  which  is  vitally 
germ.ane  to  the  subject.  "This  is,  the  wild  passion  of 
anger  was  an  unextinguished  and  unmodi&ed  heritage 


34  The  Facts  About  Luther 

transmitted  congenitally  to  the  whole  Luther  family 
and  this  to  such  an  extent  that  the  Lutner-zorn  (Luther 
rage)   has  attained  the  currency  of  a  German  collo- 
quialism.     Collectively   it   is   graphically   summarized 
by  the  Saxon  archivist  Bruckner  on  the  basis  of  arch- 
ival research  and  the  official  court  dockets  of  Salzun- 
gen,  the  seat  of  the  judicial  district."    ''Morha,"  is  the 
contention  of  this  official,  "has  attained  the  reputation 
for  its  rough  and  brusque  character,  because  in  the 
leading  groups  of  its  relationships,  especially  in  the 
Luther  branch,  it  possessed  a  tough  and  unyielding 
metal,  and  accordingly  allowed  itself  to  be  drawn  to  a 
condition  of  refractorinecs  and  querulous  self-defense. 
To  the  police  treasury  of  Salzungen,  Morha,  with  its 
rough-and-ready  methods,  was  a  welcome  and   rich 
source  of  revenue,  for,  as  the  police  dockets  show,  the 
village  was  mulcted  again  and  again  for  acts  of  vio- 
lence, which  its  inhabitants  committed,  now  in  political 
or  church  parties,  now  as  individuals,  and  foremost 
among  them  the  Luthers.     The  parish  manifested  so 
determined  an  opposition  and  obstinacy  against  the 
legal  authorities,  as  well  as  parochial,  as  to  culminate 
in  the  brutal  act  of  shooting  at  the  household  of  the 
pastor.    The  condition  of  the  neighbors  adjoining  the 
tovv^n,  whose  ready  resource  to  arms,  knives,  scythes, 
nightly  brawls  and  public  balsphemies,  are  often  al- 
luded to,   as  also  the  fines   imposed    for  their  mis- 
demeanors.    In  these  the  Luther  clan  is  mostly  in- 
volved, for  it  carried  on  its  feuds  with  others,  strikes, 
wounds,  resists  and  is  ever  ready  at  self-vindication 
and  self-defense.    Out  of  the  gnarly  wood  of  this  re- 
lationship, consisting  mostly  of  powerful,  pugnacious 
farmers,    assertive    of    their    rights,    Luther's    father 
grew."    (Archiv.  fiir  Sachsische  Geschichte  III,  38.) 

"It  will  hardly  be  denied  that  this  characterization 
on  the  whole  applied  to  John  Luther  and  that,  more- 
over, on  evidence  well  known  and  abstracting  from  the 
homicide  charge." 

"And  if  we  admit  the  leading  laws  of  heredity,  this 
may  account  for  th'^  fact,"  as  Mayhew  states  it.  "that 
Martin  was  a  veritable  chip  of  the  hard  gld  block,"  and 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  85 

with  reasons,  no  doubt  crudely  scientific  but  pictur- 
esquely apposite,  he  goes  on  to  say :  "If  a  gouty  father 
or  a  consumptive  mother,  in  the  usual  course  of  nature, 
beget  a  podagric  or  phthisic  child,  surely  one  with  a 
temper  as  fiery  as  a  blood-horse  may  be  expected  to 
cast  a  high-mettled  foal.  It  may  account  for  that 
'terrible  temper'  of  the  Reformer,  which  was  a  dread 
to  his  antagonists,  a  shock  to  refined  ears,  a  mortifica- 
tion to  his  friends,  a  sorrow  to  his  intimates  and  an  in- 
delible stain  on  his  apologetics." 

The  parents  of  Lucher  in  the  beginning  of  their  mar- 
ried life  were  not  blessed  with  much  of  the  goods  of 
this  world.  They  had,  however,  a  strong  sense  of  their 
obligations  toward  their  family  and  the  courage  to  dis- 
charge them.  Anxious  for  their  own  and  their  chil- 
dren's advancement,  they  worked  together  and  toiled 
incessantty  to  provide  food  and  clothing  and  education 
for  their  rising  offspring.  For  years  their  means  were 
scant  enough  and  the  struggle  to  meet  the  support  of 
the  household  was  both  hard  and  grinding.  Often  the 
mother  was  reduced  to  the  dire  necessity  of  car- 
rying home  the  wood  for  the  family  fire,  gathered 
from  the  neighboring  pine  forest,  on  her  own  should- 
ers. In  this  home,  like  many  before  and  since,  there 
was  unfortunately  one  great  deficiency,  more  intoler- 
able than  poverty,  namely,  the  absence  of  the  sweet 
joys  of  family  life.  Childish  fun  and  frolic  which  be- 
get happiness  and  good  cheer,  found  no  encourage- 
ment in  the  Luther  family  circle.  Home  life  was  ex- 
acting, cold,  dull  and  cheerless.  The  heads  of  the  house 
took  their  parental  responsibilities  too  seriously  and 
interpreted  them  too  rigorously.  The  father  was  stern, 
harsh,  exacting,  and,  what  is  rather  unusual,  the  mother 
was  altogether  too  much  given  to  inflict  the  severest 
corporal  punishmer.-S.  With  them  "the  apple  did  not 
always  lie  beside  the  rod."  They  were  altogether  too 
strict  and  exacting.  They  believed  in  work  and  had  no 
relish  for  ir-nocent  play  and  amusement.  In  the  govern- 
ment of  their  chiMren  they  exercised  no  discrimination 
or  moderation.  Too  much  severity  ruled  the  household 
and  as  usual  begot  disastrous  results.    To  this  over- 


36  The  Facts  About  Luther 

strenuous  discipline  we  may  find  to  a  certain  degree 
the  explanation  of  the  development  of  that  temper  of 
unbending  obstinacy  for  which  their  son  was  so  re- 
markable not  only  in  his  earliest  years,  but  throughout 
his  whole  life.  1  hough  he  seems  to  have  been  very 
fond  of  his  parents  in  after  life  and  recalled  how  they 
pinched  themselves  to  give  him  support  and  education, 
it  appears  from  his  own  statement  that  they  v/ere  ex- 
Uemely  exacting  and  punished  him  cruelly  for  the  most 
trifling  offenses.  As  examples  of  the  harsh  treatment 
to  which  he  was  subjected  in  his  youth,  he  tells  us  that 
on  one  occasion  his  father,  in  a  fit  of  uncontrollable 
rage,  beat  him  so  mercilessly  that  he  became  a  fugitive 
from  home  and  was  on  this  account  so  "embittered 
against  him  that  he  had  to  win  me  to  himself  again." 
(Tischreden,  Frankfort,  1567,  fol.  314a.)  At  another 
time,  he  says,  *'his  mother  in  her  inflexible  rigor  flogged 
him,  until  the  blood  flowed,  on  account  of  a  worthless 
little  nut." 

In  school  he  met  with  the  same  severity  that  was 
meted  out  to  him  at  home.  The  rule  here  also  was  that 
of  the  rod.  The  schoolmaster  of  that  day  was  gener- 
ally a  harsh  disciplinarian  and  inspired  a  fear  in  pupils 
v/hich  was  difficult  to  remove  ever  afterward.  Speak- 
ing later  of  his  school-day  experience,  Luther  relates 
that  he  was  beaten  fifteen  times  in  succession  during 
one  morning  and,  to  the  best  of  his  knowledge,  without 
much  fault  of  his  own.  He,  probably,  brought  the 
punishment  on  himself  by  insubordination  and  obsti- 
nacy. Whether  there  was  exceptional  provocation  or 
not,  the  flogging  only  served  to  anger  him  and  retard 
progress  in  study.  Under  this  harsh  treatment  he 
learned,  as  he  confesses,  nothing.  Even  the  customary 
religious  training  he  received  at  the  time  does  not  seem 
to  have  raised  his  spirits  or  led  to  a  free,  more  hopeful 
development  of  his  spiritual  life.  In  a  fiery  character, 
such  as  his,  the  cruel  treatment  to  which  he  was 
subjected,  both  at  home  and  in  school,  could  only  lay 
the  foundation  of  that  stubbornness  which  afterwards 
became  one  of  the  leading  features  of  the  man ;  natur- 
ally enough  it  could  intimidate  the  violence  of  his  dis- 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  37 

position  but  could  not  remove  it.     "This  severity,"  he 
says  later  on,  ''shattered  his  nervous  system  for  life." 

When  Martin  was  only  six  months  old  his  parents 
left  Eisleben  and  moved  to  Mansfelt,  a  thriving,  busy 
mining  town.  Here  they  hoped  to  obtain  a  fairer  share 
of  worldly  success.  At  an  early  age,  Martin  was  sent 
to  a  school  in  which  the  Ten  Commandments,  Child's 
Belief,  The  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Latin  Grammar  of 
Donatus  were  taught.  His  stay  in  this  place  was  un- 
eventful. In  1497,  when  he  was  fourteen  years  old, 
he  was  sent  to  school  with  the  Franciscans  at  Magde- 
burg, where  he  spent  one  year,  and  thence  to  another 
school  at  Eisenach,  a  little  town  above  which  rises  the 
hill  crowned  by  the  Wartburg,  where  long  before  St. 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  the  holy  Landgravine  of  Thur- 
ingen  spent  the  happier  part  of  her  life.  Here  the 
young  student  had  some  relatives,  who,  his  mother 
thought,  would  give  him  careful  attention,  as  he  was  at 
the  time  recovering  from  a  recent  attack  of  sickness. 
On  his  arrival  he  got  a  share  of  a  room  at  the  scholar's 
Hostel. 

In  Eisenach  Martin,  like  many  other  students  of  the 
period,  was  obliged  on  account  of  poverty  to  sing  in 
the  streets  and  collect  alms  from  the  kindly  dispo^'ed 
among  his  hearers.  He  had  a  sweet  alto  voice,  which 
later  became  a  tenor.  On  one  of  these  daily  rounds 
from  door  to  door,  a  lady  of  gentle  birth  and  charitable 
disposition  was  attracted  to  him.  Filled  with  pity  for 
his  condition,  she  invited  him  to  her  home,  where  ever 
afterwards  he  was  treated  as  an  intimate  of  the  family. 
The  home  of  this  lady  is  still  preserved;  the  first  story 
being  now  a  Bierstube,  while  the  upper  rooms  are  used 
as  a  Luther  museum.  His  entrance  into  the  hospitable 
family  of  Ursula  Cotta,  opened  up  another  and  a  new 
world  to  him.  Here  the  growing  youth  got  the  first 
glimpses  of  the  summer  side  of  life  and  the  first  taste 
cf  culture  and  refinement.  The  roughness  and  un- 
couthness  brought  from  the  peasant's  home  and  the 
miningr  town  were  gradually  tempered  in  the  boy  by 
refined  arsociatinn  with  the  eentlefolk  who  frequented 
the  Cotta  household.     Away  from  the  hardness  and 


35  The  Facts  About  Luther 

severity  of  his  early  rearing,  he  began  now  to  enjoy  life 
and  experience  its  gentler  graces  and  pleasures.  The 
generosity  of  his  benefactress  made  a  profound  im- 
pression on  him.  In  his  old  age  he  recalled  her  memory 
with  great  gratitude  and  ever  referred  to  her  as  his 
dear  "Wirthin." 

At  Eisenach  he  applied  himself  diligently  to  the  cul- 
tivation of  the  higher  studies  and  laid  solidly  and  well 
the  foundation  of  his  subsequent  learning.  Home  and 
school  and  teachers  here  were  to  his  liking.  They  were 
the  best  he  had  known  and  in  marked  contrast  to  the 
sort  he  had  hitherto  experienced  or  suffered.  In  an 
atmosphere  full  of  fine  human  feelings,  he  studiei  with 
pleasure  and  mastered  his  tasks  with  ease  and  rapidity. 
In  those  formative  years  he  had  as  principal  of  the 
High  School  he  attended  an  educator  who  knew  how 
to  stimulate  the  love  of  study  in  his  pupils.  He  was  a 
Carmelite  friar  named  John  Trebonius,  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  pedagogues  of  his  day.  It  is  related  of 
him  that  upon  entering  the  classroom,  he  always  re- 
moved his  scholar's  cap  and  insisted  that  his  associate 
teachers  should  follow  his  example,  because  of  the 
respect  due  to  pupils  out  of  whom,  he  used  to  say,  "God 
might  make  rulers,  chancellors,  doctors  and  magis- 
trates." In  Eisenach,  at  that  time,  there  were  besides 
the  parish  church,  no  less  than  nine  monasteries  and 
nunneries.  Here  Luther  had  ample  opportunities  to 
satisfy  his  devotion,  and  the  solemn  services  of  the 
Church,  the  religious  dramas  and  especially  the  German 
sacred  hymns  which  were  wont  to  be  sung  by  the  entire 
congregation,  tended  to  exercise  a  cheerful  and  sooth- 
ing influence  upon  him.  Of  his  life  in  this  place  he  had 
the  tenderest  memories  and  often  referred  to  it  as  his 
"beloved  town." 

From  Eisenach,  Luther  went  in  the  summer  of  1501 
to  Erfurt,  noted  for  its  old  tile-roofed  houses  and 
known  in  those  days  as  "The  Kitchen  Garden  Town." 
It  was  a  prosperous,  rich  an^  populous  citv.  It  boasted 
some  sivtv  thousand  inhabitPnts  and  possessed  not  only 
one  of  tb**  finest  catbe^r^ls  in  the  countrv.  but  the 
greatest  of  the  German  Universities  of  the  period.  This 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  89' 

University  was  established  by  a  Bull  of  Clement  VII. 
in  the  year  1379  and  was  the  fifth  in  rank  10  be  founded 
in  Germany.  Its  fame  was  widespread  and  its  renown 
attracted  students  from  all  parts  of  the  country  and 
even  from  abroad.  It  was  a  common  saying,  **Who 
would  study  rightly  must  go  to  Erfurt."  This  Univer- 
sity boasted  the  presence  of  some  of  the  greatest  pro- 
fessors of  the  time.  The  most  remarkable  of  these  was 
Jodocus  Trutvetter,who,  in  the  departments  of  philoso- 
phy, theology  and  dialectics,  stood  without  an  ad- 
mitted rival  in  educational  circles.  Luther  spoke  of 
this  professor  later  as  not  only  "the  first  theologian 
and  philosopher,"  but  also  "the  first  of  contemporary 
dialecticians."  Another  famous  professor  of  the  Uni- 
versity was  the  Augustinian  friar,  Bartolomaeus 
Arnoldi  Von  Unsigen,  who  was  not  only  a  profound 
scholar  but  a  most  versatile  and  prolific  writer.  Loyal 
Germans  were  proud  of  these  brilliant  lights,  whose 
fame  and  genius,  they  thought,  had  made  the  Univer- 
sity of  Erfurt  as  well  known  as  that  of  Paris. 

Luther's  father  entertained  a  high  opinion  of  his 
son's  talents.  He  wanted  him  to  become  a  great  scholar 
and  a  man  of  renown.  His  ambition  was  to  see  his 
son  hold  a  high  and  influential  place  in  the  social  scale. 
He  had  hopes  that  in  time  he  would  reach  the  honor- 
able and  lucrative  position  of  legal  adviser  to  the 
Counts  of  Mansfelt,  who  had  befriended  him  in  his 
earlier  days  when  he  had  little  of  life's  comforts.  "The 
father,"  as  Vedder  remarks,  "wished  his  boy  to  be 
spared  the  grinding  toil  he  had  known  and  to  enjoy 
advantages  he  had  missed.  He  saw,  as  many  a  poor 
man  has  seen  since,  that  for  a  youth  of  talent,  ability 
and  application,  the  most  direct  avenue  to  influence 
and  power  is  through  the  higher  education  and  the 
scholarly  advantages  thereby  afforded."  To  further  his 
designs,  he  marked  out  a  career  for  his  boy;  he  was 
ambitious  to  fit  him  for  the  profession  of  law,  which 
in  that  day,  was  a  path  to  the  most  lucrative  offices 
both  in  Church  and  State.  As  the  result  of  frugality 
and  industry  his  financial  condition  had  improved  and 
he  was  no  longer  dependent  on  the  help  of  strangers. 


40  The  Facts  About  Luther 

He,  moreover,  rose  in  the  esteem,,  of  his  fellow  towns- 
men until  he  became  Burgomaster  of  Mansfelt.  His 
improved  financial  standing  quickened  the  desire  he 
had  to  give  his  son  the  advantages  of  a  University 
training  whereby  he  would  be  fitted  to  become  a  skill- 
ful and  learned  lawyer  and  thus  in  time  reach  the 
mighty  things  expected  of  him  through  association 
with  the  influential  and  powerful  classes.  The  father's 
joy  was  great  when  he  was  able  to  take  his  son  out  of 
the  ranks  of  the  ''poor  students"  and  in  accordance 
with  a  long-cherished  project  pay  with  his  own  means 
for  the  completion  of  his  boy's  education. 

The  growing  youth  was  now  in  his  eighteenth  year. 
He  was  entered  in  the  Matriculation  Register  of  the 
Erfurt  High  School  as  *''Martinus  Ludher  ex  Mans- 
felt," and  for  a  considerable  time  thereafter,  he  con- 
tinued to  spell  his  family  name  as  Liic^er,  a  f^rm  which 
is  also  to  be  found  up  to  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  in  the  case  of  others — Liider,  Lulder, 
Leuder.  From  15 12  he  began,  however,  to  '^ign  him- 
self "Lutherius"  or  "Luther"  by  which  change  of  name 
he  has  been  designated  ever  since.  ( Kostlin-Kawerau 
I,  p.  754,  n.  2,  p.  166.) 

When  Martin  entered  the  University  he  found  the 
students  divided  into  two  groups,  one  known  as  the 
"Humanists"  or  so-called  "poets"  and  the  other  as 
"Scholastics"  or  "philosophers."  The  former  sacredly 
devoted  themselves  to  the  study  of  the  Latin  classics 
and  aimed  to  found  all  branches  of  learning  on  the 
literature  and  culture  of  classical  antiquity ;  the 
latter,  whilst  they  favored  the  pagan  Latin  models  of 
style  and  eloquence,  preferred  and  attached  more  im- 
portance to  the  cultivation  and  study  of  logic  and  scho- 
lastic philosophy.  The  Humanists  considered  that  a 
classical  training  alone  could  form  a  perfect  man.  The 
philosophers,  never  adverse  to  the  study  of  the  classic 
languages  as  a  means  of  education,  were  unwilling  that 
the  worldly  paganized  concept  of  life  advocated  by  the 
ancients  should  prevail  against  the  spiritual  glorifica- 
tion of  humanity  exoound^d  and  maintained  in  the 
traditional  teaching  of  the  Church. 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  41 

Luther,  with  his  vivacity  of  thought  and  feeh.-ig, 
soon  diccovered  that  a  number  of  his  fellow  stude-its 
were  secretly  opposed  to  sound  scholastic  studies  and 
vigorous  mental  training  and  covertly  endeavored  to 
bring  back  to  Christendom  the  ideals  of  the  most  de- 
caJ.ent  days  of  Greece  and  Rome.    Their  humanistic 
spirit  then  did  not  impress  him  much,  and  although 
in  his  private  time  he  studied  the  Latin  classics,  more 
particularly  Cicero,  Virgil,  Livy,  Ovid,  also  Terence, 
Juvenal,  Horace  and  Plautus,  it  seems  he  never  quali- 
fied to  enter  the  secret  "poetic"  circle  composed  of 
many  of  the  best  minds  of  the  day.     In  a  spirit  of 
genuine  love  of  culture  he  studied  the  classic  authors, 
but,  whilst  Latin  was  the  language  of  the  classroom 
in  all  the  Universities  and  became  a  second  mother 
tongue  to  him,  as  to  all  the  scholars  of  the  day,  yet  he 
paid  little  attention  to  grammatical  details  and  never 
attained  to  Ciceronian  purity  and  elegance  in  speech 
or  writing.     He  knew  Latin  well  enough  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes  an.l  at  a  later  period  he  was  able  to  make 
skillful   use  of   quotations   from  the  ancient  authors 
when  occasion  demanded.     Whilst  fair  progress  was 
made  in  his  humanistic  studies,  he  preferred  to  centre 
his  attention  on  the  more  useful  branches  of  learning, 
logic  and  scholastic  philosophy.     To  these  studies  he 
gave  his  chief  attention  and  whilst  he  made  great  pro- 
gress, he  did  not  particularly  distinguish  himself  in 
them.      Melanchthon    said :      "The   whole   University 
admired  his  genius."    The  praise  bestowed  by  the  col- 
league of  his  after  days  does  not  seem,  however,  to 
have   been    warranted    by    the    facts.      According   to 
Vedder,    a    non-Catholic   writer,    "Luther    apparently 
made  no  deep  impression  on  the  University  and  prob- 
ably, but  for  his  later  distinction,  few  or  none  of  his 
fellow  students  would  have  recalled  that  while  among 
them  he  had  been  known  as  'Musicus,'  on  account  of 
his  learning  to  play  the  lute,  and  as  the  'Philosopher* 
owing  to  his  frequent  fits  of  moodiness."     "In  the 
numerous  letters  left  to  posterity  by  the  aspiring  Erfurt 
Humanists,  his  name  is  never  mentioned.     iMelanch- 
thon's  statement,  that  Luther's  talents  were  the  wonder 


42  The  Facts  About  Luther 

of  the  University,  is  hardly  borne  out  by  the  record, 
for  when  he  took  his  baccalaureate  degree,  at  Michael- 
mas, in  1502,  he  ranked  only  thirteenth  in  a  list  of 
fifty-seven  candidates.  That  is  respectable,  to  be  sure, 
but  one  requires  the  vivid  imagination  of  an  eulogist 
to  see  anything  of  startling  brilliancy  in  it.  He  did 
better  in  taking  his  Master's  degree  at  Epiphany  in 
1505,  when  he  ranked  second  among  seventeen  can- 
didates."   (Vedder,  p.  5.) 

Of  his  life  during  his  University  days,  we  have  no 
very  clear  account,  owing  to  the  silence  of  our  sources. 
From  scattered  sayings  of  his  own  in  after  life  we 
learn  he  did  not  look  back  with  any  great  delight  to  his 
student  days  at  Erfurt.  He  coarsely  described  the 
town  as  a  ''beer  house"  and  a  "nest  of  immorality." 

Luther  finished  his  general  education  when  he  was 
about  twenty-one.  The  time  had  now  come  when  he 
was  to  take  up  the  study  of  jurisprudence  in  accord- 
ance with  his  father's  long-cherished  project.  The 
prospect,  however,  was  little  to  his  liking,  as  he  had 
a  decided  distaste  to  the  legal  profession.  "Jurists," 
as  he  thought  afterwards,  "made  bad  Christians  and 
few  of  them  would  be  saved.  They  take  the  money  of 
the  poor  and  with  the  tongue  deplete  both  their  pocket 
and  their  purse."  Notwithstanding  his  dislike  of  the 
legal  profession,  however,  he  began  the  study  of  law 
in  earnest  and  his  work  was  all  that  could  be  de- 
sired. After  being  a  law-student  for  only  a  few 
weeks  he  suddenly  abandoned  his  studies  to  the  great 
disappointment  of  his  father,  and  returned  home  for  a 
brief  visit  during  which  time  his  thoughts  turned  into 
quite  a  new  channel.  Ignoring  the  course  mapped  out 
by  his  father  for  his  future  career,  he  inconsiderately 
and  precipitately  determined  to  abandon  the  world  and 
work  out  his  salvation  within  the  quiet  of  the  cloister 
walls.  He  was  on  his  way  to  become  an  excellent 
professor  and  an  accomplished  advocate,  when,  un- 
fortunately for  himself  he  resolved,  without  due  con- 
sideration of  his  natural  disposition,  to  become  a  friar. 
Before  finally  taking  the  unexpected  step,  he  resorted 
to  a  very  strange  and  unusual  preparation   for  the 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  43 

state  of  life  he  intended  to  embrace.  He  wanted  to 
meet,  for  the  last  time,  a  few  of  his  friends  and 
some  ''honest,  virtuous  mai;".ens  and  women"  and 
accordingly  he  invited  them  to  a  farewell  dinner,  which 
was  given  on  the  eve  of  his  entrance  into  the  Augus- 
tinian  Monastery  at  Erfurt,  July  17,  1505.  At  the 
banquet  Luther  outwardly  was  in  a  most  cheerful 
mood.  He  was  full  of  frolic  and  while  the  wine-cup 
passed  freely,  he  enlivened  the  gathering  by  his  lute- 
playing  and  singing.  The  merry  guests  had  little  ink- 
ling of  the  unquiet  state  of  his  mind  and  they  were 
thoroughly  surprised  when  he  announced  before  the 
parting  that  he  was  about  to  renounce  the  world  and 
become  an  Augustinian  friar.  "You  see  me  to-day," 
he  said,  "but  henceforth  no  more." 

His  guests,  knowing  how  unfitted  he  seemed  for  the 
monastic  career,  and  sorry  to  lose  a  jovial  companion, 
pleaded  with  him  to  reconsider  his  decision  and  loudly 
protested  against  his  action.  They  looked  upon  him  as 
just  an  average  youth,  in  no  ways  remarkable  for  piety 
or  religious  zeal,  and  they  knew,  moreover,  how  he 
enjoyed  the  pleasures  of  life,  mingling  with  the 
frivolous  in  the  merriment  of  the  time  and  indulging 
in  boar-hunting  and  other  worldly  amusements.  They 
instinctively  felt  he  was  not  qualified  or  fitted  for  the 
sublime  vocation  to  which  he  aspired  and  they  accord- 
ingly used  all  their  powers  to  dissuade  him  from  the 
course  he  had  chosen.  All  their  efforts  were  fruitless, 
and  from  the  gaiety  and  frolic  of  the  banquet  hall  he 
went  out  to  the  monastery,  at  whose  gates  his  jolly 
companions  bade  him  farewell.  This  unexpected  st^p 
came  as  a  terrible  blow  to  his  father.  All  the  plans 
he  had  made  for  the  future  well-being  of  his  son  were 
shattered  in  a  moment.  The  sacrifices  he  had  made 
and  the  toils  he  endured  to  a  '.vance  his  son  in  a  worldly 
career  were  mac-e  valueless  by  the  willfulness  of  him 
for  whom  they  had  been  cheerfully  and  generously 
given.  The  disappointment  was  great  and  his  fury 
broke  out  in  uncontrollable  denunciation. 

We  naturally  ask  ourselves  now,  how  was  it  that 
Luther,  with  his  head  full  of  worldly  ambition,  and 


44  The  Facts  About  Luther 

already  fairly  distinguished  by  his  learning  and  honored 
with  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy,  how  was 
it  he  abandoned  the  secular  calling  to  embrace  the 
religious  ? 

The  motives  that  prompted  Luther's  sudden  resolve 
to  enter  the  monastery  "are,"  says  Ganss,  "various, 
conflicting  and  the  subject  of  considerable  debate.  He 
himself  alleges  that  the  brutality  of  his  home  and 
school-life  drove  him  into  the  monastery.  Hausrath, 
one  of  the  most  scholarly  Luther  specialists,  unreserv- 
edly inclines  to  this  belief.  The  "house  at  Mansfelt 
rather  repelled  than  attracted  him."  (Beard,  "Martin 
Luther  and  the  Germ.  Ref.,"  London,  1889,  146),  and 
to  "the  question  'why  did  Luther  go  into  the  monas- 
tery?' the  reply  that  Luther  himself  gives,  is  the  most 
satisfactory."  (Hausrath,  "Luther  Leben,"  i,  Berlin, 
1904,  2,  22.") 

"He,  himself  again,  in  a  letter  to  his  father  in  ex- 
planation of  his  defection  from  the  Old  Church,  writes, 
"When  I  was  over-stricken  and  overwhelmed  by  the 
fear  of  impending  death,  I  made  an  involuntary  and 
forced  vow."  (De  Wette,  "Dr.  Martin  Luther's 
Briefe,"  11  Berlin,  1825,  loi.)  Various  explanations 
are  given  of  this  episode.  Melanchthon  ascribes  his 
step  to  a  deep  melancholy,  which  attained  a  critical 
point  "when  at  one  time  he  lost  one  cf  his  comrades 
by  an  accidental  death."  (Corp.  Ref.  VI,  156.)  Coch- 
laeus  relates  "that  at  one  time  he  was  so  frightened  in 
a  field  at  a  thunderbolt,  as  is  commonly  reported,  or 
was  in  such  anguish  at  the  loss  of  a  companion  who 
was  killed  in  the  storm,  that  in  a  short  time,  to  the 
amazement  of  many  persons,  he  sought  admission  to 
the  Order  of  St.  Augustine."  (Cochlaeus,  "Historia, 
D.  M.  Luther's  Dillingen"  1571,  2.)  Mathesius,  his  first 
biographer,  attributes  it  to  the  fatal  "stabbing  of  a 
friend  and  a  terrible  storm  with  a  thunderclap."  (op. 
cit.,  fol.  46.)  Seckendorf,  who  made  careful  research, 
following  Bavarus  (Beyer),  a  pupil  of  Luther,  goes  a 
step  farther,  calling  this  unknown  friend  Alexius,  and 
ascribes  his  death  to  a  thunderbolt.  (Seckendorf, 
"Ausfiihrliche    Historic    des    Lutherthums,"    Leipzig, 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  45 

1714,  51.)   D'Aubigne  char.-es  this  Alexius  into  Alexis 
and  has  him  assassinated  at  Erfurt.  (D'Aubigne,  *'i-Iis- 
tory  of  the  Reformation,"  New  York,  s.  d.,  i,  166.) 
Oerger  ("Von  Jungen  Luther,"  Erfurt,  1899,  27-41), 
has  proved  the  existence  of  this  friend,  his  name  of 
Alexius  or  Alexis,  his  death  by  lightning  cr  assassina- 
tion, a  mere  legend,  destitute  of  all  historical  verifica- 
tion.    Kostlin-Kawerau  (i,  45),  states  that  returning 
from  his  "Mansfelt  home  he  Vv^as  overtaken  by  a  ter- 
rible   storm,    with    an    alarming   lightning   flash    and 
thunderbolt.   Terrified  and  overwhelme  \  he  cries  out: 
"Help,  St.  Anna,  I  will  be  a  monk."    "The  inner  his- 
tory of  the  change  is  far  less  easy  to  narrate.    We  have 
no   direct   contemporary   evidence  on   which   to   rely, 
while  Luther's  own  reminiscences,  on  which  we  chiefly 
depend,  are  necessarily  colored  by  his  later  experiences 
and  feelings."    (Beard,  op.  cit.  146.)     (Cath.  Encyc, 
Vol.  X,  p.  4sg. 

When  we  consider  the  motives  that  prompted  Luther 
to  abandon  the  world,  we  fear  he  knew  little  about  the 
ways  of  God  and  was  not  well  informed  of  the  gravity 
and  responsibilities  of  the  step  he  was  taking.  The 
calling  he  aspired  to  is  the  highest  given  to  man  on 
earth  and  because  it  is  a  ministry  of  salvation,  replete 
with  solemn  and  sacred  obligations,  it  should  not  be 
embraced  without  prayerful  consideration  and  v/ise 
and  prudent  counsel.  It  is  only  when  vocation  is  suf- 
ficiently pronounced  and  when  one  by  one  the  different 
stages  of  the  journey  in  which  are  acquired  continu- 
ally increasing  helps  towards  reaching  the  appointed 
goal,  are  passed,  that  one  should  enter  the  sanctuary. 
"No  man,"  says  St.  Paul,  "takes  the  honor  to  himself, 
but  he  that  is  called  by  God."  That  Luther  was  not 
called  by  God  to  conventual  life  seem.s  evident  enough 
from  all  the  circumstances.  Every  sign  and  mark  one 
looks  for  in  aspirants  to  the  monastic  life  were  ap- 
parently lacking  in  him.  Parent  and  friend  alike  knew 
this  and  opposed  his  course,  feeling  it  was  merely  tlic 
expression  of  a  temporary  attitude  of  mind  and  not  a 
real  vocation.  Luther  himself  admits  that  he  wa^^  driven 
by  despair,  rather  than  the  love  of  higher  perfection, 


46  The  Facts  About  Luther 

into  a  religious  career.  He  says:  "I  entered  the 
monastery  and  renounced  the  world  because  I  de- 
spaired of  myself  all  the  while."  From  his  earliest  days 
he  was  subject  to  fits  of  depression  and  melancholy. 
Emotional  by  temperament,  he  would  pass  suddenly 
from  mirth  and  cheerfulness  to  a  gloomy,  despondent 
state  of  mind  in  which  he  was  tormented  by  frightful 
searchings  of  conscience.  The  fear  of  God's  judg- 
ments and  the  recollection  of  his  own  sins  sorely  tried 
him  and  caused  unnecessary  anxiety  and  dread  as  to 
his  fate.  He  saw.  in  himself  nothing  but  sin  and  in 
God  nothing  but  anger  and  revenge.  He  fell  a  victim 
to  excessive  scrupulousness,  and,  as  he  was  self- 
opinionated  and  stubborn-minded,  he  relied  altogether 
too  much  on  his  own  righteousness  and  disregarded 
the  remedies  most  effectual  for  his  spiritual  condition. 
Like  all  those  who  trust  in  themselves,  he  rushed  from 
extreme  timidity  to  excessive  rashness.  Had  he  con- 
sulted those  who  were  skilled  in  the  direction  of  con- 
ventual religious  and  made  known  the  troubled  waters 
beneath  the  smooth  surface  of  his  daily  life,  he  might 
have  been  made  to  understand  that,  owing  to  his  ab- 
normal state  of  mind  and  his  natural  disposition,  he 
was  not  fitted  for  the  carrying  out  of  the  evangelical 
counsels  and  thus  have  been  prevented  from  forcing 
himself  into  a  mould  for  which  he  was  manifestly  un- 
suited.  In  the  uneasy  and  serious  state  of  his  con- 
science the  advice  and  counsel  of  the  wise  and  prudent 
were  ignored.  Moved  by  his  own  feelings  and  relying 
on  his  own  powers,  he  suddenly  and  secretly  decided 
for  himself  a  career  in  life  v  hich,  as  events  proved, 
was  not  only  a  mistake  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  but 
one  fraught  with  disaster  to  innumerable  others,  whom 
he  afterwards  influenced  to  join  in  his  revolt  against 
the  Mother  Church. 

Without  advice  and  without  full  deliberation,  even  in 
spite  of  the  oposition  of  those  who  knew  him  best,  he 
determined  to  become  a  friar.  Accordingly  he  wended 
his  way  to  the  Augustinian  monastery  and  presented 
himself  for  admission  as  a  novice.  The  prior  received 
the  young  Master  of  Arts  graciously  and  took  him  in  ap- 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  47 

parently  without  difficulty,  not  fearing,  as  the  Superior 
of  a  modern  religious  house  would  most  certainly  fear, 
lest  a  vocation  thus  suddenly  formed  should  be  after- 
wards as  su:ldenly  abandoned.  However,  the  Superior 
put  the  usual  question,  *'What  seekest  thou,  my  son?" 
and  Luther  replied  as  was  customary,  "I  seek  the 
mercy  of  God  and  your  fellowship."  These  prelimin- 
aries over,  he  was  permitted  to  enter.  According  to 
the  Rule  of  the  Augustinian  Order,  the  young  postu- 
lant was  now  given  ample  time  to  learn  what  lay  before 
him  as  a  friar  previous  to  donning  the  novice's  garb. 
An  experienced  member  of  the  Order  all  the  while  ex- 
plained the  Rule  to  him  and  repeatedly  reminded  him 
that  he  should  weigh  well  and  earnestly,  whether,  as 
stated  in  the  statutes  of  the  Order,  "the  spirit  which 
was  leading  him  was  of  God."  Only  after  this  prep- 
aration was  he  clothed  with  the  habit  of  the  Order, 
which  consisted  of  a  white  woolen  tunic,  a  scapular, 
also  white,  falling  over  the  breast  and  back  and  a  black 
mantle  with  a  hood  and  wide  sleeves. 

During  the  time  spent  in  preparation  for  the  recep- 
tion of  the  habit  Luther  was  invisible  to  the  world 
beyond  the  m.onastery  gate.  When  he  began  the  novi- 
tiate, which  lasted  a  whole  year,  he  was  required  to 
study  and  live  under  rules  and  usages  which  regulated 
every  hour  of  his  monastic  life.  He  had  to  spend  many 
hours  of  the  day  and  night  in  exercises  consisting  in 
prayers,  manual  labor,  and  penitential  works,  all  of 
which  were  intended  to  fit  him  for  reception  into  the 
Order. 

This  was  the  formative  period  of  the  young  novice. 
He  was  supposed  to  reflect  seriously  upon  the  duties 
and  obligations  which  at  the  profession  he  would  take 
upon  himself,  and  weigh  earnestly  the  purity  of  his 
motives  and  the  spirit  which  was  leading  him.  *'The 
Lord  forbids  that  a  blind  being  should  be  offered  up 
to  Him,"  and  as  the  religious  tie  was  never  intended 
to  bring  misery  in  place  of  the  happiness  which  it 
promises,  he  as  a  novice  was  entirely  free  until  the 
hour  of  profession  to  abandon  his  course  and  return 
to  the  world.    The  doors  of  religious  houses  were  then 


48  The  Facts  About  Luther 

as  now  always  open  to  those  who  feel  they  are  not 
called  to  follow  the  evangelical  counsels. 

The  day  came  at  last  for  Luther's  profession.   The 
ceremony  brought  together  a  large  congregation.   The 
church  was  crowded  with  the  townspeople  and  students 
from   the   University.     After   the   usual   preliminary 
services  and  when  the  superiors,  who  made  the  official 
inquiri.3  abort  the  novice's  motives,  were  satisfied  he 
would  take  th'*  vows  "at  his  own  desire,  freely,  not 
influenced  by  iorce  or  fear,'*  the  candidate  was  ad- 
mitted to  make  his  proiession  and  was  robed  in  the 
black  habit  and  hood  of  the  Hermits  of  St.  Augustine. 
This  ceremor.y  made  him  no  longer  a  man  in  the  world 
but  a  monk  in  the  cloister.    He  now  bound  himself  by 
a  sacred  oath  to  God  to  prepare  himself  for  heaven 
by  treading  a  path  of  liie  in  which  perfection  is  sought 
in  carrying  or.t  the  evangelical  counsels  of  the  Sa- 
viour, and  engaged  throi'.ghout  his  mortal  career  to 
combat  the  temptations  of  the  world  with  the  weapons 
of  poverty,  chastity,  and  obedience.    The  habit,  how- 
ever, does  not  make  the  monk ;  much  more  is  required. 
And  now  we  ask,  if  all  the  while  during  his  noviceship 
Martin  was  under  the  impression  that  his  vow  to  be- 
come a  religious  was  only  a  "forced"  one,  as  he  after- 
wards alleged,  did  he  act  honestly  when  he  knelt  down 
before  his  prior,  Wienand  of  Diedenhofen,  and  bound 
himself  by  the  most  solemn  and  sacred  oath  to  per- 
severe until  death  in  poverty,  chastity  and  obedience, 
according  to  the  rule  of  the  Order  of  St.  Augustine? 
Did  he  act  honestly  when  he  first  thought  of  becoming 
a  friar  by  concealing  his  impetuous  resolve  from  the 
superior  of  the  monastery,  who  would  hardly  have 
received  him  into  the  Order  had  he  been  made  aware 
of  his  rash  selection  of  a  state  of  life?     Did  he  act 
honestly  in  holding  to  his  resolution  when  he  knew 
that  a  vow  would  not  have  been  considered  as  binding 
unless  made  with  full  deliberation,  and  that  even  if  valid 
when  originally  ma^''e,  it  was  no  longer  binding  from 
the  time  when,  after  conscientious  self-examination,  he 
became  aware  that,  owing  to  his  natural  disposition,  he 
had  no  vocation  for  the  religious  life?     What  made 


LuTHEit  Before  His  Defection-  49 

him  pursue  such  an  unwise  and  untenable  course? 
Was  he  c'ominated  by  that  spirit  of  dogged  persever- 
ance or  obstinacy,  whereby,  as  we  know,  he  was  deter- 
mined, at  whatever  cost,  always  to  go  through  with 
anything  he  had  once  begun? 

After  making  his  profession,  the  young  religious  was 
directed  by  his  superiors  to  study  theology.  He  im- 
mersed himself  in  his  tasks  and  took  great  pleasure  in 
supplementing  the  teachings  of  the  schoolmen  and  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church  by  constant  and  frequent  read- 
ing of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  which  were  for  him,  as 
they  should  be  for  all,  a  well  of  instruction  and  en- 
lightenment. The  ponderous  red  copy  of  the  Bible 
possessed  by  the  monastery  was  well  thumbed.  H!3 
course  in  theology  was  not,  however,  as  long  as  it  might 
have  been,  for  we  find  he  was  raised  to  the  priesthood 
in  a  very  short  time  after  the  year  of  his  novitiate  was 
completed. 

He  celebrated  his  first  Mass  on  Cantate  Sunday, 
May  2,  1507.  It  was  a  day  of  great  import;  an  oc- 
casion for  the  assembling  of  old  friends.  He  invited  his 
father  and  many  ether  guests  to  be  present  at  the 
ceremony  which  meant  so  much  to  him,  his  kindred 
and  his  acquaintances.  Thus,  in  a  letter  of  invitation 
to  Johann  Braun,  Vicar  in  Eisenach,  who  befriended 
him  in  his  early  struggles  for  an  education,  he  shows 
how  high  an  estimate  he  had  of  the  sacerdotal  office 
and  dignity  which  had  been  conferred  upon  him.  In 
this  document,  the  earliest  we  have  of  him,  he  S2ys 
that,  "God  had  chosen  him.  an  unworthy  cinner,  for 
the  unspeakable  exiguity  of  His  service  at  the  altar," 
and  he  beff^ed  h!s  good  benefactor  to  be  present  at  his 
first  mass  and  by  his  prayer3  to  assist  him,  "so  that 
his  sacrifice  might  be  pleasing  in  the  sight  of  God." 
The  sacred  service  began.  He  appeared  to  be  recollect- 
ed, but  in  reality  he  was  awe-stricken  and  opprer.sed 
beyond  measure.  He  could  hardly  contain  himsjf 
for  excitement  and  fear.  The  sense  of  his  unworLhi- 
ness  to  celebrate  the  divine  mysteries  tormented  him. 
The  words  "Te  igitur  dementis ^ime  Pater,"  at  the 
commencement  of  the  Canon  of  the  Mass,  and  "offero 


50  The  Facts  About  Luther 

iibi  Deo  meo  vivo  et  vero,"  at  the  oblation,  brought  so 
vividly  to  his  mind  the  Awful  Eternal  Majesty,  that 
he  was  hardly  able  to  go  on.  He  was  so  greatly  agi- 
tated that  he  would  have  come  down  from  the  altar 
had  not  the  prior  of  the  convent  hindered  him.  The 
terrifying  idea  he  had  of  God  spoilt  even  the  happiness 
of  that  day.  This  may  account  in  great  part  for  his 
fearful  hatred  of  the  Mass  in  later  days.  Many  years 
afterwards,  he  says,  with  reference  to  his  entrance  on 
the  priesthood:  "When  I  said  my  first  Maes  at  Erfurt, 
I  was  all  but  dead,  for  I  was  without  faith;  it  was 
unjust  and  too  great  forbearance  in  God,  that  the  earth 
did  not  at  the  time  swallow  up  both  myself  and  the 
bishop  who  ordained  me." 

Old  Hans  Luther  assisted  at  the  ceremony  and 
brought  a  company  of  friends  who  rode  to  the  convent 
door  "on  twenty  horses."  His  heart  was  not  really  in 
the  celebrat^'on,  but  the  old  miner  did  not  wish  by  his 
absence  to  shame  his  oldest  and  most  promising  son. 
His  attendance  was  the  first  sign  of  his  acquiescence 
in  his  son's  vocation.  The  ceremonies  in  the  church 
having  been  concluded,  a  modest  repast  was  served 
in  the  monastery  to  the  invited  guests.  Then  Luther 
and  his  father  met  for  the  first  time  since  the  son's  la^t 
visit  home  on  the  eve  of  his  withdrawal  from  the  world. 
In  the  course  of  conversation  at  the  dinner  table  the 
young  priest  endeavored  to  justify  himself  for  chang- 
ing the  career  his  parent  had  marked  out  for  him  and 
he  longed  to  receive  from  his  father's  lips  some  words 
of  approval  and  congratulation.  He  spoke  of  the  re- 
ligious calling,  praised  the  monastic  life  as  peaceful, 
pleasant,  and  godly,  and  went  on  to  recall  the  vow,  the 
inconsiderate  and  forced  vow,  he  had  made  at  the  time 
of  the  thunderstorm,  claiming  that  he  had  been  im- 
pelled by  "terror  from  Heaven."  The  speech  was  too 
much  for  the  level-headed  father,  who  did  not  hesitate 
there  and  then  to  make  known  the  feelinsrs  thnt  filled 
his  heart.  Glancing  round  the  table  and  addressing 
all  thereat,  he  remarked  dryly,  "I  must  sit  here  and 
eat  and  drink,  when  I  would  much  rather  be  anvwbere 
else.    Have  you  never  heard  that  a  child  should  obey 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  51 

his  father  and  his  mother?  Contrary  to  the  fourth 
commandment,  you  have  left  me  and  your  mother  in 
our  old  age,  when  we  expected  help  and  consolation 
from  you  after  expending  so  much  upon  your  educa- 
tion." Luther  tried  to  soften  the  olJ  man's  heart,  but 
all  efforts  in  this  direction  were  useless.  When  at  last 
he  insisted  that  he  had  only  followed  the  divine  call 
on  entering  the  monastery,  the  sturdy  old  peasant, 
highly  irritated,  interposed  with  this  reply;  *'GoJ  grant 
it  may  not  prove  a  delusion  and  a  diabolical  specter." 
Luther  was  stung  by  the  remark,  but  did  not  pay  much 
attention  to  it  at  the  time.  He  thought  the  saying  was 
only  an  impatient  exclamation  in  keeping  with  the 
character  of  the  man  and  with  the  severity  which  he 
was  accustomed  to  from  his  earliest  c'ays  in  the  home 
circle.  He,  however,  never  forgot  the  remark  of  his 
father.  It  afterwards  caused  him  much  anguish  of 
spirit  and  doubts  of  the  wisdom  and  righteousness  of 
his  course.  Referring  to  the  speech  of  his  father  in 
later  cays,  he  tells  how  "it  struck  such  deep  root  in  his 
heart  that  he  never  heard  anything  from  his  mouth 
which  he  remembered  so  tenacioucly.  He  thought  Go:l 
spoke  by  his  lips."  "However,"  he  goes  en  to  say,  "at 
that  time  I  was  so  obdurate  in  my  devotional  intent 
that  I  shut  my  heart  as  much  as  I  could  against  his 
words,  as  being  only  of  man." 

Luther  was  now  a  religious  and  a  priest.  There  is  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  he  realized  to  the  fullest  extent 
the  cares,  duties,  and  responsibilities  of  his  sacred 
calling  and  with  apparent  ardor,  devotion  and  faith- 
fulness, he  endeavored  to  pass  his  life  in  correspond- 
ence with  its  spirit  and  requirements.  The  few  years  he 
spent  in  the  priesthood  before  his  defection  were  strenu- 
ous, active  and  busy.  He  lectured,  as  be:t  he  could 
and  as  well  as  his  previous  hurried  preparation  per- 
mitted, on  Ethics  in  the  Faculty  of  Philosophy  and  on 
special  portions  of  the  Hcly  Scriptures  in  the  newly 
founded  University  of  Wittenberg,  a  town  accredited 
then  as  the  most  bibulous  one  of  the  most  bibulous 
province  (Saxony)  of  Germany.  In  addition  to  these 
labors,  he  preached  alternately  in  the  monastery  of 


Z2  The  Facts  About  Luther 

his  Order,  the  Castle  Chapel  and  the  Collegiate  Church 
of  the  town.  His  duties  were  manifold  and  the  largest 
demands  were  made  upon  his  energies.  He  had  little 
time  left  after  fulfilling  his  various  offices  for  intellec- 
tual pursuits.  The  story  of  his  all  too  rapid  advance- 
ment shows  his  preparatory  studies  to  have  been  any- 
thing but  deep,  solid,  and  systematic.  "Comparatively 
considered,"  Fr.  Johnston  says,  "the  theological  cul- 
ture he  received  was  not  on  a  par  with  that  required 
now  by  the  average  seminarian,  let  alone  a  Doctor  of 
Divinity."  He  was  sharp,  fiery,  intelligent,  and  pos- 
sessed much  fancy  and  originality,  but  his  knowledge 
was  merely  elementary.  He  had  no  appreciation  of 
the  scholastic  speculation  and  logic  so  much  hcnorei 
at  the  time;  in  fact,  he  hated  the  whole  system  of  the 
schoolmen,  not  excepting  even  the  great  scholar  and 
theologian,  St.  Thomas.  Scholastic  subtleties  were  not 
always  to  his  liking  and  to  show  his  contempt  thereof 
he  frequently  pays  his  compliments  to  the  "rancid 
rules  of  the  logicians,"  and  to  "that  putrid  philosopher 
Aristotle."  A  feeling  of  the  insufficiency  of  his  educa- 
tion tormented  him  all  through  his  life.  He  expressed 
very  strongly  to  Staupitz  his  fear  to  stand  for  the 
doctorate  and  only  consented  under  pressure  to  pass 
the  required  examination  to  comply  with  the  wishes 
of  the  Superior  of  his  Order.  "I  was  obliged,"  he 
says,  "to  take  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  and  to 
promise  under  oath  that  I  would  preach  the  Holy 
Scriptures  which  were  very  dear  to  me,  faithfully  and 
without  adulteration."  To  the  study  of  the  Bible  he 
gave  himself  up  with  great  ardor,  so  much  so  that  he 
neglected  the  rest  of  his  theological  education,  and  his 
teacher  Usingen  was  obliged  to  protest  against  his  one- 
sided study  of  the  sacrecl  text.  It  cannot  be  denied 
that  he  was  industrious,  self-reliant,  ambitious,  but 
withal,  he  was  not  a  methodically  trained  man.  At 
bottom,  he  was  neither  a  philosopher  nor  a  theologian, 
and  at  no  time  of  his  life,  despite  his  efforts  to  acquire 
knowledge,  did  he  show  himself  more  than  superficially 
equipped  to  grapple  with  serious  and  difficult  philo- 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  53 

sophical  and  religious  problems.    His  study  never  rose 
to  brilliancy. 

Luther's  professorial  duties  were  interrupted  for  a 
short  while  when  in  the  autumn  of  15  lo  he  set  out  for 
Rome  on  business  connected  with  the  welfare  of  his 
Order.  His  absence  extended  over  a  period  of  four 
or  five  months,  only  one  of  which  he  spent  in  the 
Eternal  City.  After  attending  to  the  mission  en- 
trusted to  him,  he  spent  much  of  his  time  in  sight- 
seeing, visiting  the  holy  places,  and  secretly  taking 
lessons  in  Hebrew  from  a  Jew  called  Jacob,  "who  gave 
himself  out  as  a  physician."  Like  the  average  traveller 
to  the  city  to-day,  he  could  not  be  expected  in  the  short 
time  he  remained  there  to  stuc'.y  the  character  of  a 
people  of  whose  language  he  was  ignorant  and  to  set 
himself  up  as  a  judge  of  the  country  and  a  censor  of 
its  citizens.  Looking  at  things  through  his  German 
spectacles,  it  seems,  if  we  can  credit  his  later  writings, 
that  his  observations  concerning  the  condition  of  things 
in  Rome  were  not  to  his  liking.  He  is  said  to  have 
been  thunderstruck  with  the  wickedness  and  impiety 
of  the  Romans  and  of  Italians  in  general.  Their  south- 
ern freedom  and  lack  of  restraint  were  not  such  as  to 
appeal  to  his  phlegmatic,  northern  temperament.  It 
was,  therefore,  easy  for  him  to  believe  all  the  anecdotes 
concerning  the  corruption  then  supposed  to  be  rampant 
in  lay  and  ecclesiastical  circles  which  he  claimed  were 
told  him  by  his  not  over  trustworthy  guides  and 
acquaintances.  Most  of  his  experiences  are  given  in 
the  'Table  Talk"  and  his  later  writings,  and  may 
be  summed  up  in  the  following  words  he  says  he  heard 
fall  from  the  lips  of  one  cf  his  companions:  *Tf  there 
be  a  Hell,  then  Rome  is  bnllt  on  it."  In  the  works 
alluded  to  the  share  which  he  himself  actually  took  in 
the  pious  pilgrim-exercises  of  the  time  is  kept  very 
much  in  the  background.  Indeed,  he  tells  that  whilst 
he  was  in  Rome  he  celebrated  Mass  ''perhaps  once, 
perhaps  ten  times:  i.  e.,  occasionally,  not  regularly." 
Can  it  be  possible  that  there  were  no  good  people  in 
Rome  at  the  time  of  his  visit,  or  was  it  that  in  the 
moroseness   of   his    spirit   he    was    looking   only    for 


54  The  Facts  About  Luther 

abominations  and  corruption  ?  When  was  there  a  time 
when  there  were  not  scandals?     It  must  needs  be  on 
account  of  the  depravity  of  human  nature  that  they 
exist.     But  whilst  we  admit  that  there  may  have  been 
and  actually  were  many  influenced  by  the  godless  spirit 
of  the  world  at  the  time,  we  cannot  see  how  any 
amount  of  corruption  of  morals   should  unduly   in- 
fluence any  one  who  consistently  and  thoroughly  loves 
virtue  and  hates  vice.     If  we  admit  that  Luther  was 
greatly  scandalized  at  what  he  heard  and  saw,  how 
comes  it  that  VvC  hear  nothing  from  him  about  his 
experiences  in  Rome  after  he  left  the  city  and  returned 
home?    Jiirgens  says,  "He  may  have  spoken  of  these 
things  to  his  friends."     He  may,  yes,  but  did  he?    If 
his  visit  turned  his  reverence  for  Rome  into  loathing, 
as  his  admirers  glory  in  narrating,  we  have  no  proof 
of  it  in  his  writings  and  addresses  immediately  after 
his  return  to  Erfurt.     Bayne,  a  non-Catholic  writer, 
alluding  to  this  matter  says:     *'In  his  htters  of  thos: 
years  he  never  mentions  having  been  in  Rome.     In 
conference  with  Cardinal  Cajetan,  in  his  disputations 
with  Dr.  Eck,  in  his  epistles  to  Pope  Leo,  nay,  in  his 
tremendous   broadside    of   invective    and    accusation 
against  all  things  Romish,  in  his  'Address  to  the  Ger- 
man Nation  and  Nobility,'  there  occurs  not  one  un- 
mistakable reference  to  his  having  been  in  Rome.    By 
every  rule  of  evidence  we  are  bound  to  hold  that  when 
the  most  furious  assailant  Rome  has  ever  known  de- 
scribed from  a  distance  of  ten  years  upwards,  the  in- 
cidents of  a  journey  through  Italy  to  Rome,  the  few 
touches  of  light  in  his  picture  are  more  trustworthy 
than  its  black  breadths  of  shade."     (Bayne,  ''Martin 
Luther,"   1,234.)      Whilst  we  admit  that  there  may 
have  been  by  far  too  much  wickedness  and  impiety  in 
the  Rome  of  the  Popes  of  the  heights  of  the  Renais- 
sance, we  beg  to  be  allowed  to  question   its   extent 
and  especially  to  doubt  the  accuracy  of  the  statements 
made  by  Luther  ten  years  after  his  visit  to  Rome,  when 
he  was  exceedingly  spiteful  and  anger  against  the  Holy 
City  displaced  his  old-time   reverence.     It  is  hardly 
worth  while  to  go  into  the  details  of  the  scandals  he 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  55 

relates  when  he  severed  his  connection  with  the 
Church.  The  intelligent  reader  can  determine  for 
himself  whether  a  man  who  is  capable  cf  telling  or 
believing  all  the  absurd  anecdotes  about  the  condition 
of  things  at  Rome  he  mentions  in  his  later  writings, 
can  be  looked  upon  as  an  impartial  witness;  or 
whether  the  scathing  arraingement  which  he  pro- 
nounces at  a  distance  of  ten  years  can  be  considered 
reliable.  To  say  the  least  Luther's  whclc  Roman 
experience,  as  described  by  him  in  his  later  years 
when  he  was  in  open  rebellion  against  the  Church, 
is  open  to  question.  Hausrath,  a  non-Catholic  writer, 
does  not  hesitate  to  say :  **We  can  really  question  the 
importance  attaehed  to  remarks  which  in  a  great 
measure  ^late  from  the  last  years  cf  his  life,  when  he 
was  really  a  changed  man.  Much  that  he  relates  as 
personal  experience  is  manifestly  the  product  of  an 
easily  explained  self-delusion."  (Hausrath,  "Luther's 
Romfahrt,"  p.  79.) 

Many  non-Catholic  authors  delight  to  regale  their 
readers  with  all  the  absurd  and  incredible  stories 
Luther  told  later  on  in  his  life  about  his  visit  to  Rome. 
Their  object  is  to  furnish  a  graphic  historical  begin- 
ning of  the  change  Luther's  mind  was  undergoing 
towards  the  Church.  With  ell  due  respect  for  what 
these  ill-informed  writers  allege,  we  are  obliged  in  the 
interest  of  truth  to  tell  them  that  Luther's  visit  to 
Rome  in  nowise  shook  his  conviction  of  the  author- 
ity of  the  Holy  See  or  affected  in  the  least  his  spiritual 
life  and  theological  thought.  In  support  of  this  state- 
ment, we  quote  Vedder,  the  latest  of  the  non-Catholic 
writers  on  Luther,  who  says:  "His  faith  in  the  Church 
and  its  system  was  not  at  that  tim.e  seriously  affected." 
(Vedder,  p.  12.)  Long  before  this  statement  was  an- 
nounced, we  find  the  non-Catholic  Hausrath  declaring 
that  Luther  "returned  from  Rome  as  strong  in  the 
faith  as  he  went  to  visit  it.  In  a  certain  sense  his 
sojourn  in  Rome  even  strengthened  his  religious  con- 
victions." (Hausrath,  "IVI.  Luther's  Romfahrt,"  p.  98.) 

In  the  spring  of  15  n,  when  he  was  nearing  eight- 
and-twenty  years  of  age,  we  find  him  back  at  the 


56  The  Facts  About  LtrrnER 

University  of  Erfurt.  At  the  time  he  journeyed  to 
Rome,  his  character  was  not  yet  surixiently  formed ; 
he  was,  as  Oldecop  says,  "a  wild  young  fellow."  How- 
ever, for  five  or  six  years  after  his  return  we  find  that 
he  lectured,  preached  and  wrote  on  t-.e  Catholic  means 
of  Grace,  the  Mass,  Indulgences  and  Prayer  in  entire 
accordance  with  the  trad.t.onal  doctrine  of  the  Church. 
Just  to  show  some  of  the  ill-infcrmed  the  Catholic 
thoughts  which  engaged  him  in  his  wanderings 
through  Rome  we  give  his  words  on  the  power  of  the 
Papacy  and  commend  them  to  the  corsideration  of  the 
serious.  "If,"  he  says,  "Christ  had  not  entrusted  all 
power  to  one  man,  the  Church  would  not  have  been 
perfect  because  there  would  have  been  no  order  and 
each  one  would  have  been  able  to  say  he  was  led  by 
the  Holy  Spirit.  This  is  what  the  heretics  did,  each 
one  setting  up  his  own  principle.  In  this  way  as  many 
Churches  arose  as  there  were  heads.  Christ  therefore 
wills,  in  order  that  all  may  be  assembled  in  one  unity, 
that  his  power  be  exerci3ed  by  one  man  to  whom  also 
He  commits  it.  He  has,  however,  made  this  Power  so 
strong  that  He  looses  all  the  powers  of  Hell,  without 
injury,  against  it.  He  says:  The  gates  of  Hell  shall 
not  prevail  against  it,'  as  though  He  said :  They  will 
fight  against  it  but  never  overcome  it,*  so  that  in  this 
way  it  is  made  manifest  that  this  power  is  in  reality 
from  God  and  not  from  man.  Wherefore  whoever 
breaks  away  from  this  unity  and  order  of  the  Power, 
let  him  not  boast  cf  great  enlightenment  and  wonder- 
ful works,  as  our  Picards  and  other  heretics  do,  for 
much  better  is  obedience  than  the  victims  of  fools  who 
know  not  Svhat  evil  they  do.'  "  "Eccles.  IV,  17." 
(Werke  Weim.  ed.  i,  1883,  P-  69). 

This  extract  teems  with  respect  for  the  head  of  the 
Church  and  may  well  be  recommended  for  considera- 
tion to  all  who  claim  without  warrant  that  the  Re- 
former was  disturbed  by  what  he  saw  and  heard  in 
Rome. 

Luther,  as  remarked  before,  led  a  busy  life  whilst 
he  was  a  monk.  His  duties  were  manifold  and  exact- 
ing.   Constant  demands  were  made  upon  his  time  and 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  67 

resources  on  account  of  the  many  offices  he  was  called 
on  to  fulfill.  He  had  few  spare  moments  for  intellec- 
tual pursuits,  and  to  allow  more  ample  time  for  study; 
his  religious  duties  were  performed  but  irregularly 
and  spasmodically.  This  course  could  only  bode  ill 
for  his  future.  Infractions  of  the  rules,  breaches  of 
discipline,  distorted  ascetic  practises  were  frequent 
and  followed  ever  with  increasing  gravity.  We  are 
told  he  sometimes  omitted  to  recite  the  Divine  Office 
for  three  or  four  weeks  together,  a  duty  to  which, 
after  the  observance  of  his  vows,  he  was  bound  under 
the  penalty  of  grievous  sin.  Then  in  a  fit  of  parox- 
ysmal remorse  he  would  lock  himself  into  his  cell  and 
set  to  work  to  repair  the  omission  by  a  continuous 
recitation  of  all  that  had  been  hft  unsaid.  On  these 
ocassions  he  would  abstain  from  all  food  and  drink 
and  torture  himself  by  harrowing  mortifications. 

According  to  the  account  Luther  gives  of  himself 
in  later  years  he  was  **a  religious  of  the  strictest 
observance."  "I  was  a  pious  monk,"  he  says,  "and  so 
strictly  followed  the  Rule  of  my  Order,  that  I  ('are  to 
say  if  ever  any  man  could  have  been  saved  by  monkery, 
I  was  that  monk.  I  was  a  monk  in  enrnest,  and  fol- 
lowed the  Rule  of  my  Order  more  strictly  than  I  can 
express.  If  ever  monk  could  obtain  Heaven  by  his 
monkish  works,  I  should  certainly  have  been  entitled 
to  it.  Of  all  this,  the  friars  who  have  known  me  can 
testify.  If  it  had  continred  much  longer,  I  should 
have  carried  my  mortifications  even  to  death,  bv  means 
of  watchings,  prayers,  readings,  and  other  labors." 
How  far  this  may  have  been  true  it  is  difficult  to  say. 
Whatever  his  fellow-monks  may  have  been  able  to 
testify  there  is  no  extant  record  of  th^ir  confirmatory 
testimony  on  this  point.  One  thine:  at  lea'^t  is  clear 
from  Luther's  own  words.  His  sp^'nt^^al^  endeavors, 
whether  earnest  or  not.  were  singularly  ill-reg^ulated 
and  according  to  an  old  monastic  proverb:  "Every- 
thing beyond  obedience  looks  suspicious  in  a  monk." 

It  seems  that  during  his  religious  life  he  was  much 
agitated  and  given  to  gloom  and  despair  by  the  sense 
of  sin.     He  saw  in  himself  nothing  but  sin,  more  sin 


58  The  Facts  About  Luther 

than  he  felt  he  could  atone  for  by  any  works  of  pen- 
ance. Apparently  he  had  strong  passions  which  fre- 
quently asserted  themselves  ana  which  he  sought  to 
subdue  in  his  own  way.  In  all  his  prayers  and  fastings 
the  conception  of  GoJ  he  placed  before  his  mind  was 
very  much  that  of  a  God  of  avenging  justice  and  very 
little  that  of  a  God  of'mercy.  The  fear  of  the  divine 
wrath  made  him  abnormally  apprehensive  and  pre- 
vented him  from  experiencing  comfort  and  help  in  the 
performance  of  religious  exercises.  His  sorrow  for 
sin  was  devoid  of  humble  charity  and  instead  of  trust- 
ing with  childlike  confidence  in  the  pardoning  mercy 
of  God  and  in  the  merits  of  Christ,  as  the  Church 
always  exhorted  the  sorely  tried  to  do,  he  gave  himself 
up  to  black  despair.  His  singularity  brought  on  dis- 
tress of  soul  and  his  anxiety  increased  until  wakeful- 
ness became  a  confirmed  habit.  His  condition  became 
so  sad  that  at  times  his  fcllcw-monks  feared  he  was  on 
the  verge  of  madness.  In  his  later  days,  he  drew  this 
picture  of  his  state  of  soul  whilst  he  was  a  monk. 
"From  misplaced  reliance  on  my  righteousness,"  he 
says,  "my  heart  became  full  of  distrust,  doubt,  fear, 
hatred  and  blasphemy  of  God.  I  was  such  an  enemy 
of  Christ  that  whenever  I  saw  an  image  or  a  picture 
of  him  hanging  on  His  Cross,  I  loathed  the  sight  and 
I  shut  my  eyes  and  felt  that  I  would  rather  have  seen 
the  devil.  My  spirit  wis  completely  broken  and  I  was 
always  in  a  state  of  melancholy;  for,  do  what  I  would, 
my  'righteousness'  and  my  'good  works'  brorgfht  me 
no  help  or  consolation."    (Janssen,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  84.) 

Was  this  the  fault  of  the  state  of  life  he  had  chosen? 
Perhaps,  inasmuch  as  he  had  e-tered  into  it  without 
due  deliberation.  But  passinsf  this  consideration  over, 
we  feel  that  had  he  not  disregarded  the  monastic 
regulations  for  those  of  his  own  devising  and  had  he 
put  into  practise  the  wise  directions  of  his  spiritual 
guides,  his  troubles  of  soul  would  certainly  have  been 
much  mitisrated  and  considerably  surmounted.  Like 
most  victims  of  scrupulosity  he  saw  nothing  in  himself 
but  wickedness  and  corruption.  Not  content  with  the 
ordinary  spiritual  exercises  prescribed  by  the  rule  of 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  59 

the  Order,  he  marked  out  for  himself  an  independent 
path  of  righteousness.  He  wanted  to  have  his  own 
way,  and,  as  is  usual  in  the  case  of  all  stubborn  minds, 
the  arbitrary  means  he  resorted  to  for  relief  only  made 
his  condition  worse.  "1  prescribed,"  he  says,  ''special 
tasks  to  myself  and  had  my  own  ways.  My  superiors 
fought  against  this  singularity  and  they  did  so  rightly. 
I  was  an  infamous  persecutor  and  murderer  of  my 
own  life,  because  I  fasted,  prayed,  watched,  and  tried 
myself  beyond  my  powers,  which  was  nothing  but 
suicide."     (Jurgens  i,  577,  585.) 

Luther  in  his  struggle  to  overcome  his  passions  and 
attain  the  perfection  of  his  priestly  state  seemed  to 
forget  the  words  of  Christ:  ''Without  Me  you  can  do 
nothing."  Here  was  his  great  mistake.  To  arrive  at 
sanctity  of  life  by  one's  own  justice  and  the  power  of 
works  alone  is  not  only  impossible,  but  absurd.  Sucli 
a  course  was  never  advanced  or  advocated  by  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  when  Kostlin  ar.d  other  non- 
Catholic  writers  say  that  the  Catholic  teaching  drove 
Luther  to  the  extravagances  of  his  distorted  ascetic 
practises,  they  probably  hcive  of  that  teaching  the 
same  wrong  idea  that  Luther  had.  *'I  am,"  he  said, 
"a  most  presumptuous  justiner,  who  trusts  not  in  God's 
justice,  but  in  my  own."  A  true  Catholic  is  never 
expected  to  become  a  "presumptuous  justiiier"  and  he 
never  can  unless  he  relies  too  much,  if  not  entirely, 
en  his  own  merits  and  good  works. 

Luther  now  began  to  think  that  the  sad  condition 
of  his  soul  resulted  from  the  teaching  of  the  Church 
on  good  works  while  all  the  time  he  was  living  in 
direct  and  open  opposition  to  the  Church's  doctrine 
and  disciplinary  code.  Misled  by  the  caprices  of  his 
own  imagination,  he  became  more  and  more  subject 
to  fits  of  melancholy  and  discouragement,  so  that,  as 
he  says,  he  even  "hated  God  and  wished  that  he  had 
never  been  born."  He  would  have  done  well  had  he 
remembered  the  good  and  sensible  advice  which 
Staupitz,  his  superior,  gave  when  he  said  to  him: 
"Enough,  my  son:  you  soeak  of  sin,  but  know  not 
what  sin  is ;  if  you  desire  the  assistance  of  God,  do  not 


60  The  Facts  About  Lhther 

act  like  a  child  any  longer.  God  is  not  angry  with  you 
but  you  are  angry  with  God."  The  advice  was  cer- 
tainly required  in  his  state  of  intense  scrupulosity  but 
it  did  not  seem  to  have  left  any  abiding  impression  on 
his  mind.  His  morbid  interior  conflict  banished  all 
peace  of  soul.  He  was  unhappy,  not  because  he  was  a 
monk,  but  because,  though  a  monk  exteriorly,  he 
never  entered  interiorly  into  the  spirit  of  his  Rule  or 
of  his  Church.  A  reaction  was  inevitable  and  his  mind, 
not  accustomed  to  self-examination  and  self-control, 
went  as  far  as  possible  in  the  opposite  direction.  From 
extreme  timidity  he  passed  to  excessive  rashness. 
Formerly  he  trusted  too  much  in  his  own  powers  and 
wilful  exertions.  He  perceives  the  absurdity  and 
weakness  of  his  self-reliant  position  and  recedes  there- 
from entirely  despairing  in  its  help.  Then,  going  to 
another  extreme,  he  throws  himself  too  far  upon  God's 
mercy,  so  far,  in  fact,  as  to  renounce  even  co-operation 
with  God's  grace  and  to  expect  salvation  without  any 
ciTort  or  action  on  his  own  part.  Thus  from  one 
absurdity  he  passed  to  another  with  the  utmost  facility. 
He  came  by  degrees  to  believe  that  by  reason  of  in- 
herited sin,  man  was  become  totally  depraved  and 
possessed  no  liberty  of  the  will.  He  then  concluded 
that  all  human  action  whatever,  even  that  which  is 
directed  towards  good,  being  an  emanation  from  our 
corrupt  nature,  is,  in  the  sight  of  God,  nothing  more 
or  less  than  dcac'ly  sin :  therefore  our  actions  have  no 
influence  on  our  salvation ;  we  are  saved  "by  faith 
alone  without  good  works."  He  thought  that  "faith  in 
Christ  makes  His  merits  our  possession,  envelops  us 
in  the  garb  of  righteousness,  which  our  guilt  and  sin- 
fulness hide,  and  supplies  in  abundance  every  defect 
of  human  righteousness.'* 

It  has  long  been  considered  amongst  the  ill-informed 
that  Luther  inaugurated  his  movement  against  the 
Church  of  his  forefathers  from  a  desire  of  reform. 
This  view-point  is  not  borne  out  by  the  facts  in  the 
case.  External  causes  played  little  or  no  part  in  his 
change  of  religion.  The  impelling  motive  centered  i  i 
his  own  nature,  which  demanded  a  teaching  able  to 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  61 

assure  his  tormented  sonl  of  pardon  of  sin  and  ulti- 
mate salvation.  Troubled  with  doubts  as  to  his  voca- 
tion and  oppressed  by  "violent  movements  of  hatred, 
envy,  quarrelsomeness  and  pride,"  his  singular  self- 
esteem  and  self-reliance  would  not  suffer  him  to  make 
intelligent  and  enlightened  use  of  the  remedies  most  ef- 
fectual for  the  cure  of  his  abnormal  spiritual  maladies. 
Wedded  to  his  own  opinions  and  refusing  to  hear  the 
voice  of  God  in  Catholic  direction,  his  temptations, 
doubts,  and  fears  increased,  as  might  be  expected,  un- 
til they  drove  him  to  despair  of  salvation  and  "plague  1 
him  with  the  spirit  of  sorrow."  Tortured  by  the 
melancholy  thoughts  of  predestination,  he  failed  to 
humble  himself  in  childlike,  trustful  prayer  to  find  a 
way  out  of  his  spiritual  troubles.  He  spurned  the  use 
of  the  approved  methods  of  mastering  spiritual  dif- 
ficulties, and  even  considered  these  as  worthless  to 
liclp  in  acquiring  sanctity  and  holiness  of  life.  Instead 
of  overcoming  such  sentiments  he  allowed  them  to 
develop  to  such  an  extent  that  an  apostate  spirit  mas- 
tered him.  Dissatisfied  with  the  ordinary  means  of 
conquering  self,  he  vainly  thought  he  would  find  the 
peace  of  conscience  he  scrcly  needed  by  following  his 
own  conceptions  and  setting  up  a  teaching  of  his  own 
as  ajainst  the  traditional  methods  and  approved  theol- 
ogy of  the  ancient  time-honored  Catholic  Church. 

Led  on  by  a  spirit  that  was  not  of  God,  he  formu- 
lated and  proclaimed  the  blasphemous  pronounce- 
ment that  the  Catholic  Church  was  unable  by  her 
teaching  and  sacramental  system  to  reconcile  souls 
with  God  and  bring  comfort  to  those  thirsting  after 
salvation.  From  error  to  error  he  passed  in  quick 
succession  until  we  find  him  unblushingly  upholding 
the  utter  corruption  of  human  nature  because  of  origi- 
nal sin,  denying  the  freedom  of  the  will,  defending  th^ 
rights  of  reason  against  dogmatic  authority  and  de- 
claring that  "reason  speaks  nothing  but  m.adness  and 
foolishness."  These  and  many  other  erroneous  teach- 
ings, as  we  shall  see  furth'^r  on,  bothered  him  until  he 
severed  his  connection  with  the  Catholic  Church  and 
without  credentials  inaugurated  a  system  of  religion 


6S  The  Facts  About  Luther 

of  his  own  making  wherein  he  would  be  free  to  preach 
his  own  individual  conceptions,  which  he  thought  would 
bring  peace  and  happiness  and  comfort  to  struggling 
souls,  but  which  ended,  as  sad  experience  attests,  in 
conflicts,  misery  and  despair.  Was  this  the  work  of 
God  or  the  work  of  an  enemy  of  God?  Was  this 
obedience  to  the  manifest  will  of  God  in  the  sanctifica- 
tion  of  souls  or  was  it  rebellion  in  ugliest  form  an  J 
with  the  saddest  consequences?  Was  it  reformation 
or  was  it  deformation? 

From  out  the  vast  number  whom  the  enemy  of  man 
raised  up  to  invent  heresies,  which  St.  Cyprian  says, 
''destroy  faith  and  civi'^e  unity,"  not  one,  or  all  to- 
gether, ever  equalled  or  surpassed  Martin  Luther  in 
the  wide  range  of  his  errors,  the  ferocity  with  whicli 
he  promulgated  them  and  the  harm  he  did  in  leading 
souls  away  from  the  Church,  the  fountain  of  ever- 
lasting truth.  The  heresies  of  Sabellius,  Arius,  Pel- 
agius  anJ  other  rebellious  men  were  insignificant  as 
compared  with  those  Luther  formulated  and  pro- 
claimed four  hundred  years  ago  and  which  unfortun- 
ately have  ever  since  done  service  against  the  Church 
of  the  living  God.  In  Luther  m.ost,  if  not  all,  former 
heresies  meet,  and  reach  their  climax.  To  enumerate 
fully  all  the  v/icked,  false  and  perverse  teachings  of 
the  arch-heretic  wordd  require  a  volume  many  times 
larger  than  the  Bible,  and  every  one  of  the  lies  and 
falsehoods  that  have  been  used  against  the  Catholic 
Church  may  be  traced  back  to  him  as  to  their  original 
formulator.  When  the  Protestant  ranks  were  united 
in  a  solid  phalanx  against  the  Mother  Church,  a  lie 
that  passed  current  bearing  Luther's  mark  was  good 
coin  everywhere  in  heretical  circles. 

To  get  some  idea  of  the  character  and  extent  of  the 
false  and  pernicious  teaching  a^Vanced  by  Luther,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  spend  a  life-time  in  the  perusal 
of  his  numerous  works.  Amongst  those  that  have  come 
down  to  us  are  his  Forty  One  propositions,  which  were 
condemned  by  Leo  X.  in  his  bull  Exurqe  Domine, 
published  in  1520  and  found  in  the  Bullarium  of 
Leo  X.  (Constit.  40),  in  Cochlaeus'  account  of  Luther's 


Luther  Before  His  Defection  63 

proceedings  and  in  Bernini's  Works.  Besides  the  er- 
rors enumerated  in  the  Bull  of  Leo  X.  there  are  a  vast 
number  of  others  mentioned  and  set  forth  clearly  by 
Noel,  Alexander,  and  Gotti,  who  made  a  special  study 
of  the  various  writings  of  Luther,  particularly  his 
treatises,  "De  Indulgentiis,"  **De  Reformatione," 
"Respon.  ad  lib.  Catharini,"  "De  Captivitate  Babilon- 
ica,"  "Contra  Latomum,"  *'De  Missa  privata,"  "Contra 
Episc.  Ordinem,"  ''Contra  Henricum  VIII,  Regem," 
"Novi  Testamenti  Translatio,"  "De  formula  Missse  et 
Communionis,"  "Ad  Waldenses,"  "Contra  Carlos- 
tadium,"  "De  Servo  Arbitrio,"  "Contra  Anabaptistas," 
etc.  In  all  these  works  and  in  some  others  printed  in 
Wittenberg,  we  find  the  novel  and  arbitrary  teachings 
he  invented  to  displace,  if  possible,  the  doctrines  which 
the  Church  had  inherited  from  Christ  and  His  Apostles. 
There  may  be  seen  how  the  primitive  Christian  teach- 
ing underwent,  under  his  direction,  a  fundamental 
alteration  in  its  most  essential  parts,  and  there  also 
may  be  found  the  principles  he  laid  down  with  an  ar- 
rogance as  blasphemous  as  it  was  rnreaconable,  for 
the  subversion  and  destruction  of  all  moral  and  civil 
order.  The  brazen  boldness  which  appears  on  almost 
every  page  of  works  written  to  ventilate  his  per- 
nicious religious  and  moral  views,  has  never  been 
equalled  before  or  since  by  any  other  enemy  of  the 
Church  of  God. 

The  Catholic  Church  knows  that  heresies  must  needs 
arise  and  whilst  she  pities  their  formulators  and  pro- 
moters she  is  always  patient  and  forbearing.  She 
knows  their  work  is  the  work  of  man  and  like  him 
destined  to  die.  They  do  harm  for  a  time.  They  mis- 
iead;  injure  and  persecute  while  they  last,  but  triumph 
they  never  shall.  Built  upon  the  dissolving  nightmares 
cf  unhappy  visionaries,  their  false  teaching  courts  fail- 
ure and  disaster.  Men,  gradually  through  prayer  and 
study,  grow  wise  to  the  tactics  of  "false  teachers"  an  1 
organizers  of  "sects  of  perdition,"  and  learn  to  beware 
of  them,  as  Christ  directed,  for  they  are  ranked,  as  St. 
Paul  tells,  amongst  "murderers  and  idolators"  "who 
shall  not  possess  the  Kingdom  cf  God."     A  vul^r 


64  The  Facts  About  Luther 

man-made  form  of  belief  can  never  satisfy  for  long  the 
aspirations,  needs,  and  foreshadowings  of  those  who 
are  in  real  earnest  in  their  search  for  the  true  religion, 
which,  by  divine  arrangement,  was  made  independent 
of  the  powers  of  the  world,  and  destined  to  continue 
its  saving  mission  in  spite  of  all  opposition. 

The  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  can  never  be  displaced 
by  any  or  all  systems  of  human  manufacture,  for  they 
always  bear  on  their  face  the  stamp  of  error  and 
falsehood.  Built  on  the  everlasting  granite  of  the 
Petrine  rock,  one  pebble  of  whose  power  the  combined 
ages  and  nations  have  not  succeeded  in  knocking  from 
its  surface,  the  Church  has  triumphed  everywhere  and 
at  all  times  over  error  and  its  abettors.  Christ  sai  1  in 
the  creation  of  the  Church  that  "the  gates  of  Hell  will 
not  prevail  against  her,"  and  so  speaks  He  every  hour 
in  her  preservation.  She  cannot,  therefore,  perish  and 
go  down  before  the  work  "of  sects  of  perdition"  as 
St.  Paul  calls  the  organizations  of  religious  revolution- 
ists and  anarchists.  The  Catholic  Church  is  God's 
work  and  His  protecting  power  will  ever  preserve  her 
unshaken  and  immovable  to  tell  men  till  the  last  mo- 
ment of  time  what  they  must  believe  and  what  they 
must  do  to  gain  eternal  happiness. 


CHAPTER  III. 
Luther  and  Indulgences. 

LUTHER  for  some  little  time  before  his  breach  with 
the  Church  seemed  to  forget  the  sacred  obligation 
he  was  under  by  reason  of  his  doctorate  to  preserve 
Catholic  orthodoxy  and  never  in  the  least  to  de- 
part therefrom.  A  great  change  v^as  discernible  in 
his  spiritual  life.  By  degrees  he  grew  indifferent  to 
the  performance  of  good  works  and  failed  to  meet  the 
aims  and  to  follow  the  rules  of  monastic  discipline. 
Neglecting  to  spiritualize  his  life  by  the  usual  and 
approved  exercises  of  piety,  his  faith  naturally  weak- 
ened and  grew  cold  and,  as  might  be  expected  in  such 
a  dangerous  state,  he  came  little  by  little  to  antago- 
nize the  Church's  teachings.  Whether  he  was  con- 
scious or  not  of  the  sad  condition  of  both  soul  and  in- 
tellect by  reason  of  the  growing  omission  of  his  spiri- 
tual duties,  he  began  unfortunately  to  find  fault  with 
certain  beliefs,  customs  and  conditions  of  the  Church 
which  happened  to  meet  with  his  displeasure.  As  time 
went  on,  he  grew  bolder  in  his  fault-finding  and  be- 
came more  unduly  critical  and  contentious.  Carried 
away  by  pride,  and  stimulated  by  the  applause  his 
singular  methods  won  for  him  among  those  who  longed 
to  be  freed  from  the  requirements  of  Christianity,  he 
began  to  denounce  what  he  called  the  "buffoonery"  of 
contemporary  theologians,  and  conceiving  himself  to  be 
the  master  mind  of  all,  he  imagined  that  he  was 
especially  fitted  to  bring  about  a  reformation  of  the 
ancient  discipline  of  the  Church  and  effect  a  sweeping 
change  in  her  consecrated,  fixed  and  accepted  teach- 
ings. The  course  he  was  pursuing  was  characteristic 
of  the  man.  As  Dungcrsheim  says :  ''He  had  always 
been  a  quarrelsome  man  in  his  way  and  habits,"  and, 
as  his  pupil  OldecoD  declares,  *'he  never  learnt  to  live 
at  peace  and  being  disputatious,  he  was  always  desirous 
of  coming  off  victor  in  differences  of  opinion  and  liked 
to  stir  up  strife." 


66  The  Facts  About  Luther 

His  revolutionary  methods  and  daring  innovations 
were  fast  pushing  him  toward  the  path  of  error.  To 
careful  observers  he  vvas  becoming  an  object  of  sus- 
picion and  among  the  learned  of  the  time  he  was 
gradually  losing  caste  and  acquiring  a  bad  name  for 
himself  on  account  of  the  growing  opposition  of  his 
views  to  those  of  the  Church  of  his  forefathers.  *'As 
early  as  15 15,"  Mathesius,  his  pupil  and  first  bio- 
grapher, tells  us,  ''he  was  already  called  a  heretic." 
His  Rector,  the  famous  Dr.  Pollich,  aware  of  his  novel 
and  dangerous  pronouncements,  is  said  to  have  given 
his  estimate  of  the  young  professor  in  these  words : 
*This  monk  has  deep  eyes ;  he  has  strange  fancies  and 
will  no  doubt  later  on  disturb  the  teachings  prevalent 
at  the  Universities."  Was  this  great  scholar  a  prophet? 
Whether  he  was  or  not  matters  little,  but  of  one  thing 
we  are  certain,  events  justified  the  estimate  formed 
of  him. 

Luther  on  account  of  a  lack  of  a  solid  systematic 
theological  training,  as  well  as  by  reason  of  the  con- 
fusion of  his  mind  in  dealing  with  grave  questions, 
together  with  a  deficiency  in  real  Catholic  feeling,  was 
preparing  himself  for  revolt.  He  needed  only  time 
and  opportunity  and  stubborn  resolve  to  broach  openly 
and  give  wide  publicity  to  the  strange  and  peculiar 
doctrinal  views  vv^hich  he  had  secretly  formed  and 
which  eventually  became  the  fundamental  articles  of 
his  new  system  of  religion.  Knowingly  or  unknov/- 
ingly,  he  was  preparing  himself  to  sever  his  connec- 
tions with  the  Church  of  his  forefathers.  His  inward 
falling  away  from  the  graces  of  his  priestly  state  and 
his  trifling  with  most  serious  and  sacred  questions  of 
Divine  faith,  combined  with  the  restless  condition  of 
his  mind  and  attachment  to  his  own  ideas,  were  dis- 
posing and  fitting  him  for  a  great  public  outbreak 
when  he  would  give  his  novel  and  erroneous  teachings 
to  the  world. 

A  favorable  opportunity  for  airing  his  new-fangled 
notions  presented  itself  when  John  Tetzel,  the  famous 
Dominican  friar,  was  actively  and  zealously  engaged 
in  preaching  the  Indulgence  granted  by  Pope  Leo  X. 


Luther  and  Indulgences  67 

for  the  construction  of  St.  Peter's  Giurch  in  Rome. 
This  distinguished  preacher  no  doubt  would  have 
remained  but  Httle  known  in  history  were  it  not  for 
the  epoch-making  event  in  which  he  and  Luther  figured 
so  conspicuously.  Many  years  later  Luther  in  refer- 
ring to  the  struggle  which  created  such  a  great  stir 
in  the  world,  declared  that  he  W'as  drawn  by  force  into 
the  famous  controversy  and  called  forth  unwillingly 
from  his  professorial  duties  into  the  arena  of  public 
life.  Lie  says :  ''I  was  completly  dead  to  the  world 
till  God  deemed  the  time  had  come ;  then  Squire  Tetzel 
excited  me  with  the  Indulgence  and  Doctor  Staupitz 
spurred  me  on  against  the  Pope."  ("Colloquia,"  ed. 
Bindseil,  3,  p.  188.)  This  stc^tement,  with  its  nasty 
fling  at  his  opponent,  was  made  years  after  the  oc- 
curence when  the  circumstances  appeared  to  him  very 
different  from  what  they  really  were,  as  we  shall  dis- 
cover later  on.  Let  us  now  pass  on  to  the  occasion 
v/hlch  led  to  Luther's  encounter  with  Tetzel. 

Julius  11.  had  it  brought  under  his  notice  that  the 
ancient  Basilica  of  St.  Peter,  which  had  been  given  to 
the  Church  by  the  Emperor  Constantine,  was  now 
falling  into  decay.  He  determined  to  use  the  oppor- 
tunity and  to  employ  all  the  architectural  talent  of  that 
brilliant  period,  in  order  to  erect  a  new  Basilica  in  its 
place,  which  by  its  magnificence  should  be  worthy  of 
its  position  as  the  memorial  of  the  great  Apostle  and 
the  central  church  of  the  Catholic  world.  Julius  11. 
commenced  the  work  and  devoted  large  sums  to  its 
accomplishment.  These,  however,  were  far  from  suf- 
ficient, and  it  became  evident  that  the  cost  of  a  build- 
ing of  such  magnitude  could  be  defrayed  only  by  a 
successful  appeal  to  the  piety  of  the  Christian  world. 
Accordingly,  Leo  X.,  the  successor  of  Julius,  who  died 
in  1513,  proclaimed  an  Indulgence;  that  is  to  say,  he 
granted  an  Indulgence  of  a  most  simple  kind  to  all, 
wherever  they  might  be,  who  would  contribute  ac- 
cording to  their  means  towards  the  expenses  of  the 
rising  edifice. 

This  is  not  tlic  place  for  a  detailed  exposition  of  the 
Catholic  doctrine  of  Indulgence,  but  it  is  necessary  that 


68  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  reader  should  bear  m  mind  the  official  meaning  of 
the  term  and  what  it  represents.  The  word  Indulgence 
in  the  mind  of  the  Church  signifies  favor,  remission  or 
commutation.  This  meaning  has  been  gradually  changed 
by  non-Catholics  to  convey  the  sense  of  imlawful 
gratification  and  of  free  scope  to  the  passions.  On  this 
account,  it  happens  that  when  some  ignorant  or  preju- 
diced persons  hear  of  the  Church  granting  an  Indul- 
gence, the  idea  of  license  to  commit  sin  is  at  once  pre- 
sented to  their  minds.  This  is  far  from  the  truth,  for  an 
Indulgence,  as  may  be  seen  by  a  glance  at  any  Catholic 
handbook  of  theology,  is  a  total  or  partial  remission 
of  the  temporal  punishments  which  remain  due  to  sin, 
after  the  guilt  and  eternal  punishment  have  been  for- 
given. There  are  three  things  to  be  considered  in 
every  deadly  sin:  first,  its  guilt;  second,  its  eternal; 
and  third,  its  temporal  punishment.  The  first  and 
second  are  forgiven  by  the  sacraments  of  baptism  and 
penance,  as  the  ordinary  channels  of  pardon ;  the  third 
is  expiated  by  our  sufferings,  and  our  penances,  or  by 
remission  or  commutation  through  an  Indulgence. 

An  Indulgence,  therefore,  has,  properly  speaking, 
nothing  to  do  with  the  guilt  of,  and  the  eternal  punish- 
ment due  to,  mortal  sin,  nor  does  an  Indulgence  forgive 
venial  sin.  Much  less  is  it  a  permission  for  the  com- 
mission of  future  sins,  as  the  adversaries  of  the  Church 
have  calumniously  asserted.  An  Indulgence  regards 
temporal  punishment  only.  Many  non-Catholics  do 
not  sufficiently  understand  the  nature  of  an  Indulgence 
and  hence  arises  their  misrepresentation  of  the  doc- 
trine. ]\Iany  imagine  that  it  forgives  sin,  and  many 
more,  that  it  is  a  permission  to  sin.  They  represent  a 
man  who  gains  a  full  or  plenary  Indulgence,  as  one 
who  for  a  certain  sum  of  money,  to  be  given  to  the 
pope,  bishop,  or  priest,  obtains  absolution  from  all  his 
crimes,  without  any  sorrow  or  repentance  of  heart, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  a  kind  of  permit  to  sin  as  much 
as  he  pleases  in  the  future.  Once  more,  therefore, 
an  Indulgence  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
guilt  of  past  sins,  nor  their  eternal  punishment,  much 
less  with  sins  to  come.     And  if  some  of  the  bulls  or 


Luther  and  Indulgences  69 

briefs,  regarding  the  grant  of  Indulgences,  speak  in  that 
strain,  they  are  either  falsified  by  our  enemies,  or  else 
must  be  understood  in  the  only  Catholic  sense,  namely, 
the  remission  of  the  temporal  punishments  which  sin 
deserves.  Indeed,  how  could  any  honest  and  sensibk- 
man  think  the  Church  so  silly  as  to  contradict  herself 
on  this  score?  She  teaches  most  positively  that  in 
order  to  obtain  the  pardon  of  sins  committed  after 
baptism,  the  only  ordinary  means  instituted  by  Jesus 
Christ  is  the  Sacrament  of  Penance;  and  now,  she  is 
made  to  say,  by  the  mouth  and  pen  of  our  adversaries, 
that  the  Sacrament  of  Penance  is  by  no  means  the 
only  ordinary  means,  but  that  Indulgences,  without  any 
repentance  whatsoever,  will  answer  just  as  well.  She 
says  in  her  doctrine  on  confession  that  sorrow  for  sin, 
including  a  firm  purpose  of  amendment,  so  firm  that 
one  should  be  resolved  to  die  rather  than  offend  Al- 
mighty God  by  any  deadly  sin,  is  an  absolutely  neces- 
sary condition  of  pardon  for  sin;  and  in  her  doctrine 
on  Indulgences  she  is  made  to  say,  by  our  adversaries, 
that  any  one  can,  on  paying  a  certain  sum  of  money, 
purchase  not  only  pardon  for  sins  already  committed, 
but  for  such  as  he  has  a  mind  to  commit  in  future.  It 
is  important  to  keep  in  mind  this  explanation  of  an 
Indulgence  as  given  b}^  the  Church  in  order  to  be 
guarded  against  those  who  maliciously  construe  her 
teaching  to  convey  the  sense  of  unlawful  gratification 
and  of  free  scope  to  the  passions. 

To  say  that  an  Indulgence  gives  a  license  to  commit 
sin  for  money  is  a  falsehood  cut  out  of  whole  ch^th. 
Non-Catholics  who  oft"er  objections  to  the  Church's 
idea  of  Indulgences  should  be  careful  as  to  how  they 
express  themselves  on  the  question  for  they  profess  to 
believe  that  all  that  the  greatest  sinners  have  to  do  to 
receive  full  pardon  and  plenary  Indulgence  for  all  their 
sins,  past,  present,  and  future,  is  to  have  faith.  Such 
is  the  omnipotence  attrilmted  to  an  act  by  those  who 
believe  in  ''justification  by  faith  alone."  What  hypoc- 
risy to  roll  up  the  whites  of  one's  eyes  in  a  pretence 
of  holy  horror  at  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  Indulgences, 
which  is  severity  itself  compared  witli  their  swccj-inje: 


70  The  Facts  About  Luther 

act  of  faith  which  alone  suffices  to  wash  all  a  man's 
sins  away,  and  put  him  at  once,  without  penance  or 
purgatory,  into  the  company  of  the  angels  in  heaven. 

Now  what  we  have  to  consider  is  whether  it  be  true 
that  the  system  of  Indulgences  into  contact  with  which 
Luther  was  brought,  differed  in  any  essential  par- 
ticulars from  our  modern  system.  This  is  necessary, 
because  the  charge  brought  against  the  Catholic 
Church  as  justifying  Luther's  revolt  from  her  obedi- 
ence was,  in  its  original  and  ancient  form,  that  Indul- 
gences were  permissions  to  commit  sin,  or  at  least 
pretended  remissions  of  the  guilt  of  sin,  sold  in  the 
most  barefaced  way,  over  the  counter,  so  to  speak,  for 
sums  of  money,  amidst  degrading  accompaniments. 
We  have  partially  succeeded  in  convincing  modern  and 
more  enlightened  non-Catholics  that  this  is  by  no 
means  a  true  account  of  our  teaching  and  have  caused 
them  to  remodel  the  charge,  which,  as  it  nowadays 
mostly  runs,  is  that  we  have  altered  our  system  from 
what  it  was  in  the  days  of  Luther;  that  then  ii  cer- 
tainly pretended  to  be  a  sale  of  forgiveness  for  money, 
but  that  now,  in  deference  to  the  outcry  against  such 
an  enormity,  we  have  revised  it  and  cast  it  into  a  more 
suitable  form.  This,  however,  is  not  the  fact.  Any 
enlightened  inquirer  after  truth  can  easily  discover 
that  in  offering  an  Indulgence  in  return  for  alms  to  a 
good  work  Leo  X.  was  acting  in  no  way  differently 
from  the  practice  of  the  Church  before  or  since  his 
time.  It  has  always  been  the  right  and  the  privilege 
of  the  Pope  not  only  to  grant  and  proclaim  In- 
dulgences, but  also,  in  dispensing  these  spiritual  favors 
to  stimulate  and  reward  charitable  contributions,  to 
designate,  if  he  so  pleases,  some  particular  object  to 
which  they  may  be  applied,  as  Leo  X.  did  to  carry  on 
the  sacred  and  splendid  work  of  completing  the  erec- 
tion of  St.  Peter's  Basilica  which  "of  temples  old  or 
altars  new"  now  stands  alone  in  "majesty  and  beauty 
with  nothing  like  to  it,  worthiest  of  God,  the  holy  and 
true."  So  far,  then,  we  have  discovered  no  impropriety 
in  the  Pope's  action. 

The  bull  which  Leo  X.  issued,  granting  a  plenary 


Luther  and  Indulgences  71 

Indulgence  to  all  Christendom,  reached  Germany  in 
15 15.  For  the  preaching  of  this  Indulgence  in  Ger- 
many that  country  was  divided  into  three  parts,  with 
only  one  of  which  we  need  to  concern  ourselves.  For 
the  district  comprising  the  whole  of  Saxony  and 
Brandenburg  this  commission  was  divided  between  the 
guardian  of  the  Franciscans  of  Mentz  and  Albert  of 
Brandenburg,  the  newly  installed  archbishop  of  the 
diocese.  But  the  guardian  of  the  Franciscans  declin- 
ing to  act,  the  entire  commission  passed  into  the  hands 
of  the  archbishop,  whose  office  it  was  to  see  that  the 
Indulgence  was  effectually  made  known  in  his  district 
and  to  collect  the  alms  of  the  pious  donors.  Albert  was 
a  young  man  of  distinguished  family,  only  twenty-four 
at  the  time  of  his  appointment.  He  was  under  the 
usual  obligation  of  paying  the  fees  for  his  pallium, 
which  amounted  to  no  less  a  sum  than  thirty  thousand 
gold  florins.  That  there  should  have  been  such  fees 
is  quite  intelligible,  for  the  Holy  See  with  its  vast  staff 
of  officials  for  the  conduct  of  a  world-wide  business 
must  be  supported,  and  it  is  right  that  those  for  whose 
benefit  they  are  established  should  contribute  to  their 
upkeep.  As  it  was  not  customary  for  the  archbishops 
to  pay  the  fees  for  the  pallium  out  of  their  private 
sources,  they  had  to  be  levied  on  the  faithful  of  the 
diocese.  But  this  had  been  done  twice  within  ten  years 
for  the  immediate  predecessors  of  Albert  of  Branden- 
burg, Archbishops  Berthold  and  Uriel.  To  raise  the 
sum  a  third  time  within  a  short  interval  seemed  im- 
possible without  assistance.  Wherefore,  in  order  to 
afford  relief  to  his  flock,  Archbishop  Albert,  by  repre- 
senting to  the  Pope  the  greatness  of  the  crushing 
burdens  on  the  revenues  of  the  See,  obtained  leave  to 
retain  a  portion  of  the  proceeds  of  the  papal  indulgence 
in  his  province  toward  the  payment  of  his  debt.  This 
fact  suffices,  in  Dr.  Grone's  opinion,  to  clear  the  arch- 
bishop from  the  reproach  of  avarice  cast  at  him  by 
Protestant  writers,  who  have  also  not  failed  to  impute 
all  sorts  of  unworthy  motives  to  him  for  making  choice 
of  the  Dominican,  John  Tetzel,  as  his  chief  sub-com- 
missioner, or  quaestor,  in  preaching  the  Indulgence. 


72  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Archbishop    Albert    proceeded    with    the    greatest 
caution  in  promulgating  the  Indulgence.    He  issued  a 
long  document  on  the  occasion  and  in  it  he  first  pre- 
scribes to  the  preachers  and  their  assistants  the  mode 
in  which  they  are  to  conduct  themselves  and  explains 
very  lucidly  the  character  and  provisions  of  the  In- 
dulgence.   In  the  second  place  he  points  out  the  nature 
of  the  grace,  that  is,  the  spiritual  benefits  offered.    Of 
these  the  first  is  a  "Plenary  Indulgence,"  or  plenary 
remission  of  all  temporal  punishment  due  to  sin  by 
which  the  pains  of  Purgatory  are  fully  forgiven  and 
blotted   out.     The  term   "plenary   remission   of   sin" 
should  be  remarked,  as  it  is  on  such  a  phrase  that 
those  fix  who  strive  to  make  out  that  an  Indulgence  is 
a  forgiveness  of  the  guilt  of  sin.     But  the  phrase  is 
usual  in  grants  of  Indulgence  even  to  this  day,  and 
means,  as  the  expository  clause  just  given  distinctly 
declares,  a  remission  of  the  sin  as  regards  all  its  tem- 
poral punishment.     In  such  a  remission  a  sacramental 
absolution  is  presupposed  as  having  taken  away  the 
guilt  and   eternal  punishment,   and  it  is  because,  by 
supervening  on  this,  the  Indulgence  takes  away  like- 
wise  all  the  temporal  punishment,  that   is   called   a 
"plenary  remission  of  sins."     In  the  third  place  the 
Instruction  of  the  archbishop  lays   down  the  condi- 
tions for  gaining  the  Plenary  Indulgence.   "Although," 
it  says,  "nothing  can  be  given  in  exchange  which  will 
be  a  worthy  equivalent  for  so  great  a  favor,  the  gift 
and  grace  of  God  being  priceless,  still  that  the  faithful 
may  be  the  more  readily  invited  to  receive  it,  let  them, 
after  having  first  made  a  contrite  confession,  or  at 
least  having  the  intention  of  so  doing  at  the  proper 
time,  visit  at  least  seven  churches  assigned  for  this 
purpose  and  in  each  say  devoutly  five  Our  Fathers  and 
Hail  Marys  in  honor  of  the  Five  Wounds  of  Jesus 
Christ,  by  which  our  redemption  was  wrought;  or  else 
one  Miserere,  to  obtain  pardon  for  sins."  The  italicized 
clause  is  to  be  specially  noticed,  as  proving  conclusively 
that  there  was  no  thought  of  granting  absolution  of 
guilt  otherwise  than  through  the  Sacrament  of  Pen- 
ance.    Another  condition  for  the  Indulgence  was  the 


Luther  and  Indulgences  73 

contribution  towards  the  building  expenses  of  St. 
Peter's,  and  the  archbishop  proceeds  to  prescribe  a 
suitable  amount  according  to  the  rank  and  means  of 
the  contributors.  Of  the  poor  he  added  specially  that 
"those  who  have  no  money  must  supply  by  their 
prayers  and  fasts,  since  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
should  be  made  open  to  the  poor  as  much  as  to  the 
rich."  The  scale  of  offerings  or  donations  laid  down 
in  the  Instruction  disproves  the  buying  and  selling 
theory.  If  it  were  true  that  Indulgences  were  offered 
as  goods  in  the  market,  to  be  bought  and  sold,  the 
assessments  should  have  been  uniform  for  all.  The 
code  of  prices  disappears,  and  that  of  contributions 
comes  in,  when  such  a  scale  of  assignments  made  out 
according  to  the  rank  and  means  of  the  donors  is  borne 
in  mind.  Besides,  as  we  have  seen,  the  notion  of  price 
is  expressly  repudiated  in  the  archbishop's  instruc- 
tions. 

There  are  some  other  points  covered  in  the  Instruc- 
tion, such  as  permissions  to  choose  a  confessor  and 
grants  to  the  priest  selected  of  ample  faculties  to  ab- 
solve from  censures,  etc.,  but  it  is  not  necessary  to 
detail  these  as  they  have  little  bearing  on  the  Indul- 
gence controversy.  A  careful  examination  of  Albert's 
Instruction  to  the  preachers  of  the  Indulgence  will 
show  that  there  is  not  a  thought  in  it  which  the  Church 
at  the  present  day  would  hesitate  to  subscribe. 

'*We  can  see  now,"  as  Fr.  Smith  says,  ''that  this 
historical  Indulgence,  at  all  events  in  the  form  in  which 
it  was  conceived  by  Leo  X.  and  by  his  Commissioner, 
Albert  of  Brandenburg,  did  not  differ  in  kin  1,  and 
hardly  in  its  circumstances,  from  those  to  which  we 
are  accustomed  at  present.  We  can  see,  too,  that  the 
intention  was  to  make  the  preaching  of  the  Indulgence 
a  sort  of  'mission,'  as  we  should  now  term  it,  the 
people  being  stirred  up  by  special  sermons,  prayers 
and  devotions  during  the  period  of  one  or  two  weeks, 
to  take  seriosly  to  heart  the  affair  of  their  souls,  and 
to  make  a  good  Confession  and  Communion.  Evidently 
the  aim  w^as  to  associate  the  erection  of  a  church  which 
was  to  be  the  head  of  all  Churches  with  a  grand  re- 


74  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ligious  awakening  throughout  the  world.  The  Pope, 
therefore,  and  his  Commissioners  must  be  acquitted  of 
the  blame  which  the  attacks  of  Luther  have  heaped 
upon  them  and  this  is  the  point  of  principal  importance 
which  we  have  desired  to  prove." 

Archbishop  Albert  was  anxious  to  promote,  as  much 
as  possible,  the  success  of  the  pious  undertaking.  To 
help  him  to  effect  this  great  end,  he  selected  John 
Tetzel,  a  Dominican  friar,  to  whom  he  entrusted  the 
actual  preaching  of  the  Indulgence,  because  he  con- 
sidered him  the  likeliest  person  he  knew  of  on  account 
of  his  eminent  learning,  piety  and  zeal  in  the  cause  of 
the  Church  and  the  welfare  of  the  Holy  See  to  stir  up 
the  religious  fervor  and  devotion  of  the  people.  He 
knew  that  Tetzel  had  much  experience  and  an  uninter- 
ruptedly successful  career  as  an  Indulgence  preacher 
during  the  two  previous  decades.  He  knew,  moreover, 
that  he  enjoyed  the  renown  of  being  one  of  the  most 
popular  and  eloquent  preachers  then  in  Germany.  His 
character,  temperament,  and  ability  eminently  fitted 
him  to  attract  large  congregations  to  hear  the  word  of 
God,  and  to  move  them  to  contribute  generously  to  the 
object  advocated.  The  archbishop's  appointment  of 
Tetzel  as  his  sub-commissioner  is  tantamount  to  a 
refutation  of  all  the  calumnies  heaped  upon  him  by  his 
enemies,  who  without  foundation  alleged  he  disregard- 
ed utterly  the  injunctions  given  him  and  perverted  the 
good  purpose  of  the  Indulgence  into  a  downright 
scandal. 

Tetzel,  on  the  confirmation  of  his  appointment,  en- 
tered on  his  duties  with  his  accustomed  energy,  activ- 
ity, and  zeal.  What  he  announced  everywhere  through- 
out his  district  and  on  all  occasions  to  his  hearers,  was 
in  the  main,  be  it  remembered,  the  same  doctrine  as 
Luther  quite  clearly  and  correctly  set  forth  regarding 
indulgences  in  a  sermon  on  the  subject  which  he 
preached  in  1516.  He,  like  all  theologians  before  and 
since  his  day,  was  careful  to  point  out,  as  Grisar  re- 
marks, ''that  an  Indulgence  was  to  be  considered  merely 
as  a  remission  of  the  temporal  punishment  due  to  sin, 
but  not  of  the  actual  guilt  of  sin.    He  declared,  quite 


Luther  and  Indulgences  75 

rightly,  that  the  erection  of  the  Church  of  St.  Peter  was 
a  matter  of  common  interest  to  the  whole  Christian 
world,  and  that  the  donations  toward  it  were  to  be 
looked  upon  as  part  of  the  pious  undertakings  and  good 
works  which  were  always  required  by  the  Church  as 
one  of  the  conditions  for  gaining  an  Indulgence.  At 
the  same  time,  in  accordance  with  the  teaching  and 
practice  of  the  Church,  he  demanded  of  all,  as  an  es- 
sential preparation  for  the  Indulgence,  conversion  and 
change  of  heart  together  with  a  good  confession." 
(Grisar  i,  p.  328  and  328.) 

Towards   the    end    of    15 17,    Tetzel,    after   having 
preached  the  Indulgence  with  signal  success  at  Leipsic, 
Magdeburg,  Halberstadt,  Berlin  and  other  places,  ar- 
rived at  Juterbock,  a  small  town,  only  a  few  miles 
distant  from  Wittenberg.    Into  Wittenberg  itself  Tetzel 
did  not  enter,  but  the  inhabitants,  having  heard  of  the 
reputation  of  the  popular  preacher,  went  off  in  great 
numbers  to  listen  to  his  wonderful  sermons.    The  very 
students  in  the  new  University,  where  Luther  was  one 
of  the  professors,  deserted  the  lecture-halls  to  hear  the 
celebrated  friar.     The  enthusiastic  reception  accorded 
to  Tetzel  augured  well  for  the  success  of  his  mission. 
Some  of  those  who  used  to  frequent  Luther's  confes- 
sional were  among  the  crowds  who  went  to  Juterbock 
and  they  came  back,  it  was  said,  refusing  to  give  up 
their  sins.    When  Luther  exhorted  and  rebuked  them, 
they  showed  him  the  Indulgences  they  had  received 
from  Tetzel  and  told  him  they  had  bought  permission 
to  continue  in  their  sins,  whilst  nevertheless  assured 
of  immunity  from  guilt  and  punishment.     This  is  the 
traditional  story  that  has  for  long  done  service  against 
the  Church,  but  as  Fr.  Smith  aptly  remarks,  "a  very 
decisive  argument  entitles   us  to   dismiss   it  at  once. 
Luther,  as  we  are  about  to  see,  presently  framed  his 
indictment  against  Tetzel  and  it  does  not,  remember, 
contain  a  word  of  suggestion  that  the  latter  undertook 
to   forgive   future   sins.     Presumedly   what   happened 
was  much  more  simple.    Those  who  were  wont  to  at- 
tend Luther's  confessional  at  Wittenberg,  on  this  oc- 
casion went  to  the  neighboring  town  to  gain  the  In- 


76  The  Facts  About  Luther 

dulgence.  If  Luther  was  already  set  against  the  doc- 
trine of  Indulgences,  the  natural  effect  of  such  an  in- 
cident would  be  to  stir  the  bile  of  so  excitable  a  person, 
and  that  this  was  in  reality  his  doctrinal  position  at  the 
time  is  clear  from  a  serm.on  which  he  forthwith  de- 
livered at  the  Castle  Church.  For  in  it  he  denounced 
not  only  Tetzel,  but  the  formalism  into  which  the  sys- 
tem of  Indulgences  had  degenerated,  as  well  as  the 
very  doctrine  itself  which  the  Catholic  Church  holds 
still  as  she  ever  has  held.  It  cannot  be  proved  from 
Scripture,  he  says,  that  Divine  Justice  demands  of  the 
sinner  any  other  penance  or  satisfaction  save  reforma- 
tion of  heart.  He  denied  that  satisfaction  was  part  of 
the  sacrament  of  penance.  He  denied  that  anything 
beyond  contrition  was  needed  for  the  remission  of  sin. 
This  denial  of  temporal  punishment  for  sin  and  the 
necessity  of  it  as  satisfaction  for  sin  of  course  left  no 
place  for  any  Indulgence  or  commutation  of  it.  As 
he  denied  the  Indulgence  to  be  of  any  avail  to  the  liv- 
ing, he  also  declared  it  to  be  fruitless  when  applied  to 
the  dead.  He  maintained  that  even  after  receiving  the 
sacrament  of  penance,  the  gaining  of  an  Indulgence 
plunged  the  Christian  back  into  the  filth  of  his  sin. 
With  tirades  against  the  schoolmen,  he  urged  his  hear- 
ers to  disregard  Indulgences,  and  give  any  alms  they 
had  to  spare,  not  to  the  building  of  St.  Peter's,  but  to 
the  poor.''  The  famous  sermon  that  opened  the  war 
on  the  Church  is  a  specimen  of  Luther's  style.  There 
is  no  accurate  reasoning,  no  grasp  of  the  subject,  but 
plenty  of  violent  declamation.  Tetzel's  reply  was  the 
plain,  distinct  utterance  of  a  theologian.  Luther's 
retort  was  characteristic:  'T  laugh  at  your  words  as 
I  do  at  the  braying  of  an  ass;  instead  of  water  I  rec- 
ommend to  you  the  juice  of  the  grape;  and  instead  of 
fire,  inhale,  my  friend,  the  smell  of  a  roast  goose.  I  am 
at  Wittenberg.  I,  Doctor  Martin  Luther,  make  it 
known  to  all  inquisitors  of  the  faith,  bullies  and  rock- 
splitters,  that  I  enjoy  here  abundant  hospitality,  an 
open  house,  a  v/ell-supplied  table,  and  marked  atten- 
tion:  thanks  to  the  liberality  of  our  duke  and  prince, 
the  Elector  of  Saxony." 


Luther  and  Indulgences  77 

Can  any  man  believe  sucli  a  one  to  be  raised  up  by- 
God  to  guide  men  in  the  way  of  salvation? 

This  attack  on  the  Indulgence-preacher  and  the  doc- 
trine of  Indulgences  was  in  a  short  time  ctfterwards 
followed  up  by  a  document  in  which  Luther  formulated 
his  new  creed  and  embodied  his  changed  view-points 
and  singular  opinions.  Although  he  had  promised  his 
bishop,  who  was  aware  of  his  peculiar  views,  that  he 
would  not  publish  for  general  notice  his  new-fangled 
notions  on  Indulgences,  Luther,  with  a  hypocrisy  and 
instability  that  does  not  generally  rank  as  a  mark  of 
sanctity  or  divine  mission,  nevertheless  did  publish 
them,  for  forthwith  he  prevailed  on  the  porter  of  his 
monastery  to  affix  on  the  doors  of  the  Castle  church 
his  famous  Theses,  ninety-five  in  number,  mostly  bear- 
ing on  Indulgences,  but  scarcely  one  raising  a  solid 
objection.  This  occurred  on  the  eve  of  All  Saints  15 17, 
when  the  Castle  church  began  the  celebration  of  its 
titular  feast.  The  yearly  commemorative  services 
naturally  drew  a  vast  concourse  of  devout  worshippers. 
Time  and  place  lent  themselves  to  a  wide  publication 
of  the  Saxon  monk's  novel  doctrines.  Beyond  this 
challenge  to  all  opposers  to  meet  him  in  the  arena  of 
theological  disputation,  there  was  nothing  extraordi- 
nary in  the  incident.  When  we  consider  that  the  custom 
of  publicly  challenging  scholars  to  learned  disputations 
was  in  accordance  with  the  custom  of  the  times,  v/e 
fail  to  find  in  the  nailing  of  his  Theses  to  the  church 
notice-boards  that  act  of  ''exceptional"  and  ''heroic 
courage"  over  which  many  of  his  friends  are  still  wont 
to  go  into  ecstacy,  nor  do  we  think  that  the  man  him- 
self was  in  the  least  conscious  at  the  time  how  far  the 
ball  he  set  a  rolling  would  develop  into  an  avalanche. 
He  was  simply  availing  himself  of  a  custom  among 
scholars  of  those  days  to  play  a  crafty  game.  Relying 
on  his  skill  in  debate,  he  looked  forward  to  a  victory 
over  Tetzel  and  to  an  opening  for  commencing  the  w.ir 
against  some  abuses  he  heard  of  connected  with  the 
preaching  of  the  Indulgence.  He  was  much  disap- 
pointed that  no  one  came  forward  to  dispute  the  ques- 
tions he  had  raised,  and  he  was  much  hurt  to  find  his 


78  The  Facts  About  Luther 

friends  and  intimates  very  silent  about  the  matter.  "The 
ninety-five  sledge-hammer  strokes  delivered  at  the 
grossest  ecclesiastical  abuse  of  the  age,"  as  Lindsay, 
the  non-Catholic  writer,  calls  Luther's  Theses,  terrified 
nobody.  They  only  emphasized  the  boldness  and  rash- 
ness of  their  author  in  abandoning  teachings  he  once 
firmly  held  and  in  attacking  the  doctrines  of  a  world- 
wide institution  like  the  Catholic  Church. 

The  well-instructed  Catholic  who  examines  Luther's 
theses  will  discover  at  once  some  erroneous,  some  in- 
consistent with  others,  some  merely  satirical  cuts  at  the 
Holy  See,  some  are  merely  puerile.  For  the  most  part 
they  are  full  of  contradictions  and  obscurities,  and 
lack  precision  in  expression  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
show  lamentable  deficiency  in  theological  training. 
Lindsay,  a  non-Catholic  and  an  admirer  of  Luther, 
declares  rightly;  "The  Theses  are  not  a  reasoned 
treatise;"  and  Beard,  another  non-Catholic,  says: 
"They  impress  the  reader  as  thrown  together  somewhat 
in  haste  rather  than  showing  carefully  digested  thought 
and  deliberate  theological  intention ;  they  bear  him  out 
one  moment  into  the  audacity  of  rebellion  and  then 
carry  him  back  to  the  obedience  of  conformity." 
(Beard  218,  219.) 

The  tone  in  which  the  Theses  were  written  indicates 
that  they  were  not,  as  he  declared,  advanced  as  tenta- 
tive propositions,  but  that  they  were  considered  by 
their  author  as  settled  beforehand  and  irrefutable.  In 
a  letter  he  wrote  at  this  time  to  the  Bishop  of  Branden- 
burg he  declared  his  absolute  submission  and  his  readi- 
ness to  follow  the  Catholic  Church  in  everything,  but, 
at  the  same  time,  he  wanted  it  to  be  known  quite  clearly 
that,  "in  his  opinion  nothing  could  be  advanced  against 
his  theses,  neither  from  Holy  Scripture,  Catholic  Doc- 
trine or  Canon  Law,  with  the  exception  of  the  utter- 
ances of  some  few  canonists,  who  spoke  without  proofs 
and  of  some  of  the  scholastic  Doctors  who  cherished 
similar  views,  but  who  also  were  unable  to  demonstrate 
anything."  Though  his  language  in  some  of  the  theses 
is  comparatively  guarded  he,  nevertheless,  puts  for- 
ward certain  opinions  which  shov/  plainly  enough  that 


Luther  and  Indulgences  79 

he  means  to  go  straight  into  combat  with  the  Cathohc 
Church.  Many  of  the  theses,  says  Fr.  Grisar,  (Vol.  1, 
p.  331)  "from  the  theological  point  of  view,  go  far 
beyond  a  mere  opposition  to  the  abuse  of  Indulgencs. 
Luther,  stimulated  by  contradiction,  had,  to  some  ex- 
tent, altered  his  previous  views  on  the  nature  of  In- 
dulgences and  brought  them  more  into  touch  with  the 
fundamental  principles  of  his  erroneous  theology." 

"A  practical  renunciation  of  Indulgences,  as  it  had 
been  held  up  to  that  time,  is  to  be  found  in  the  theses, 
where  Luther  states  that  Indulgences  have  no  value 
in  God's  sight,  but  are  merely  to  be  regarded  as  the 
remission  by  the  Church  of  the  canonical  punishment. 
(Theses  5,  20,  21,  etc.)  This  destroys  the  theological 
meaning  of  Indulgences,  for  they  had  always  been 
considered  as  a  remission  of  the  temporal  punishment 
of  sin,  but  as  a  remission  which  held  good  before  the 
Divine  Judgement-seat  (cp.  Nos.  19,  20  and  21  of  the 
41  propositions  of  Luther  condemned  in  1520).  In 
some  of  the  theses  (58-60)  Luther  likewise  attacks  the 
generally  accepted  teaching  with  regard  to  the  Church's 
treasury  of  grace,  on  which  Indulgences  are  based. 
Erroneous  views  concerning  the  state  of  purgation  of 
the  departed  occur  in  some  of  the  propositions  (18,  19, 
29).  Others  appear  to  contain  what  is  theologically 
incorrect  and  connected  with  his  opinion  regarding 
grace  and  justification;  this  opinion  is  not,  however, 
clearly  set  forth  in  the  list  of  tiheses." 

"Many  of  the  statements  are  irritating,  insulting  and 
cynical  observations  on  Indulgences  in  general,  no  dis- 
tinction being  made  between  what  v/as  good  and  what 
was  perverted.  Thus,  for  example,  Thesis  66  de- 
clares "the  treasures  of  Indulgences"'  to  be  simply  nets 
"in  which  the  wealth  of  mankind  is  caught."  Others 
again  scoff  and  mock  at  the  authority  of  the  Church, 
as,  for  example,  Thesis  86,  "Why  does  not  the  Pope, 
who  is  as  rich  as  Croesus,  build  St.  Peter's  with  his 
own  money,  rather  than  with  that  of  poor  Christians?" 
Now  the  Pope  was  not  building  a  private  chapel  for 
himself,  but  a  basilica  for  the  whole  Christian  world. 
Another  thesis  declared :  "Christians  should  be  taught 


80  The  Facts  About  Luther 

that  he  who  gives  to  the  poor  or  assists  the  needy,  does 
better  than  he  who  purchases  Indulgences."  It  was 
the  old  argument  of  the  traitor  Judas,  who  asked: 
''Why  was  not  this  ointment  sold  for  three  hundred 
pence  and  given  to  the  poor?  Now  he  said  this  not 
because  he  cared  for  the  poor."    John  XII,  5,  6. 

This  brief  sketch  of  Luther's  theses  gives  the  reader 
a  slight  conception  of  their  nature,  aim  and  scope. 
Ostensibly  they  were  levelled  against  the  alleged  abuses 
of  the  papal  Indulgences,  but  attacks  on  the  doctrine 
itself,  as  v/ell  as  on  the  authority  of  the  Pope  were  so 
insidiously  and  maliciously  intermingled  therein,  that 
it  was  evident  to  the  discerning  that  they  were  not 
proposed,  as  he  claimed,  ''out  of  love  and  zeal  for  the 
ascertaining  of  the  truth." 

At  first  many  of  the  learned  of  the  day  were  in- 
clined to  regard  Luther's  challenge  as  one  of  the  petty 
monastic  intellectual  squabbles  which  Germany  fre- 
quently produced.  Tetzel,  however,  did  not  consider 
the  matter  as  a  mere  academic  dispute,  as  Luther  al- 
leged, for  "defining  and  elucidating  truth."  With  his 
clear  mind  he  saw  plainly  that  the  discussion  which 
Luther  wished  to  arouse  involved  a  deep  and  signifi- 
cant attack  covertly  made  against  the  whole  peniten- 
tial system  of  the  Church,  its  teaching,  its  practice, 
and  its  authority.  He  recognized,  moreover,  the  ex- 
tremes Luther  would  be  driven  to  by  his  false  princi- 
ples and  the  fatal  results  they  were  bound  to  produce 
on  the  masses.  In  the  tone  of  a  prophet  he  declared 
that  many,  on  account  of  Luther's  novel  opinions, 
would  contemn  the  authority  and  power  of  the  Pope 
and  the  Roman  See,  would  intermit  the  works  of 
sacramental  satisfaction,  would  no  longer  believe  their 
pastors  and  teachers,  but  would  explain,  every  one 
for  himseH,  the  Sacred  Scriptures  according  to  private 
fancy  and  whim  and  believe  just  what  they  might 
choose,  to  the  great  detriment  of  souls  throughout 
Christendom,  and  the  integrity  of  the  Christian  deposit 
of  faith. 

Luther's  Theses  were  so  pointedly  directed  against 
the  doctrine  of  Indulgences  and  against  the  preachers, 


Luther  and  Indulgences  81 

that  it  was  impossible  for  Tetzel  to  pass  them  over  in 
silence.  However,  before  taking  action  on  so  critical 
an  occasion  he  sought  the  counsel  of  his  archbishoo 
and  of  his  old  friend  and  former  professor,  Dr.  Wim- 
pina.  They  directed  him  to  reply  to  Luther's  ninety- 
five  theses;  and  presently  there  appeared  a  set,  or 
rather  two  sets  of  theses,  Anti-theses  they  were  called ; 
one  set  of  One  Hundred  and  Six  Theses  being  a 
counter  statement  of  the  doctrine  of  Indulgences,  the 
other  of  Fifty  Theses  on  the  Papal  power  to  grant 
them.  These  theses  were  drawn  up  for  Tetzel  by  his 
old  professor  and  showed  a  thorough  understanding 
of  the  doctrine  of  Indulgences. 

Tetzel  assumed  all  responsibility  for  the  propositions 
which  in  the  clearest  and  most  lucid  manner  set  forth 
the  true  Catholic  doctrine  of  Indulgences  and  of  the 
absolute  necessity  of  repentance,  confession  and  satis- 
faction required  for  the  pardon  of  sin.  These  proposi- 
tions are  so  forcible  that  we  do  not  knov/  where  a 
theologian  could  go  for  a  more  satisfying  defence  of 
Indulgences  against  current  Protestant  difficulties. 
They  affirmed  that,  though  an  Indulgence  exempts  the 
sinner  from  the  vindicatory  penalties  of  the  church, 
it  leaves  him  just  as  much  bound  as  ever  to  submit  to 
her  medicinal  ones ;  that  it  does  not  derogate  from  the 
merits  of  Christ,  since  its  whole  efficacy  is  due  to  the 
atoning  passion  of  Christ;  as  also  that  the  Pope  has 
power  only  by  means  of  suffrage  to  apply  the  benefits 
of  an  Indulgence  to  the  souls  in  purgatory.  JMoreover, 
to  say  that  the  Pope  cannot  absolve  the  least  venial 
sin  is  erroneous ;  and  equally  so  to  deny  that  all  vicars 
of  Christ  have  the  same  power  as  Peter  had ;  rather 
to  assert  that  Peter,  in  the  matter  of  Indulgences,  had 
more  power  than  they,  is  both  heretical  and  blasphem- 
ous. 

The  descriptions  of  the  Indulgence-preacher  as  given 
by  Hecht,  \'ogcl,  Hoffmann  and  other  i)artisan  writers 
are  so  full  of  obloquy  founded  on  garbled  quotations 
and  falsified  facts,  that  we  are  prepared  to  fin 'I  in 
Tetzel's  Theses  the  brutal,  reckless  and  ignorant  utter- 
ances of  a  buffoon.    This  is  wide  of  the  truth.    What 


82  The  Facts  About  Luther 

we  do  find  is  a  calm  and  scientific  theological  state- 
ment, quite  remarkable  for  its  force  and  lucidity.  His 
Theses  are  a  luminous  refutation  of  Luther's.  They 
were  so  ably  and  brilliantly  defended  that  about  the 
end  of  April,  1518,  the  University  of  Frank fort-on-the- 
Oder,  in  recognition  of  the  Dominican's  learning,  con- 
ferred upon  him  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity. 

Tetzel  thoroughly  grasped  both  the  nature  and  the 
complexity  of  his  duties  in  the  confutation  of  Luther's 
errors.  Sobriety  pervades  every  line  of  his  proposi- 
tions and  dignified  self-repression  marks  all  his  utter- 
ances in  the  defense  of  truth.  He  was  made  the  victim 
of  many  outrageous  charges,  but  there  is  no  trace  of 
irritation  in  his  speech.  Without  sarcasm  and  without 
pronouncing  anything  personally  offensive  to  his  op- 
ponent, he  takes  up  the  doctrinal  points  one  after  an- 
other and  in  serious,  enlightened,  and  dignified  lan- 
guage, as  becomes  the  teacher  of  God's  truth,  explains 
and  defends  them  with  clearness,  force,  and  directness. 
It  is  only  as  he  draws  to  the  close  of  his  marvelous 
confutation  that  he  deigns  to  notice  the  charges  so  un- 
justly flung  at  him.  Then  he  refers  to  them  in  the 
fewest  and  most  becoming  words.  He  says:  "For 
one  who  has  never  heard  them  to  declare  in  public 
Theses  that  the  Indulgence-preachers  employ  scandal- 
ous language  before  the  people,  and  take  up  more  time 
in  explaining  Indulgences  than  in  expounding  the 
Gospel,  is  to  scatter  lies  picked  up  from  others,  to  spread 
fictions  in  place  of  truths,  and  to  show  oneself  light- 
minded  and  credulous ;  and  is  to  fall  into  mischievous 
error."  Here  we  think  we  have  a  true  account  of  what 
happened.  There  were  plenty  of  mischief-makers  to 
concoct  scandalous  stories  if  they  were  likely  to  be 
listened  to  and  Luther  had  shown  a  readiness  to  wel- 
come this  kind  of  slander,  if  not  to  add  to  it  from  his 
own  imagination,  and  the  poor  Indulgence-preacher 
was  the  sufferer. 

Luther  would  not  be  silenced.  The  overweaning 
opinion  he  entertained  of  himself  and  of  his  own 
abilities  made  him  set  at  naught  every  correct  and  ac- 
cepted exposition  of  the  authority  of  tradition  and  the 


Luther  and  Indulgences  83 

binding  force  of  the  teaching  of  the  Church.  The 
defenders  of  truth,  no  matter  how  learned  or  ap- 
proved they  might  be,  were  all  despised  when  they 
were  not  in  agreement  with  his  newly  formulated  view- 
points on  the  question  of  Indulgences.  He  scoffed  at 
all  defense  of  the  right  and  the  true,  and,  as  he  said 
in  his  usual  uncouth  way,  "he  cared  as  little  for  it  as 
for  the  braying  of  an  ass."  Such  was  the  way  in 
which  he  always  endeavored  to  expose  his  adversaries, 
however  exalted  they  might  be  in  station  or  venerable 
for  character  and  learning,  to  the  low  merriment  of 
the  people ;  and  it  was  a  very  important  element  in  at- 
tracting the  rabble  to  his  side.  The  mob  is  ever  ready 
to  hail  with  delight  any  one  who  champions  freedom 
from  the  requirements  of  Christianity.  Some  of  his 
friends,  among  whom  were  learned  theologians,  saw 
with  sorrow  the  downward  course  he  was  pursuing 
and  begged  him  to  discontinue  his  antagonism  to  the 
Church's  teachings  and  practices.  All  their  kindly  ad- 
monitions were  disregarded  and  he  continued  even 
more  than  before  to  reprobate,  denounce  and  mis- 
represent the  Church's  doctrines  and  usages. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  later  on,  in  looking  back 
over  the  days  that  were  gone,  Luther  had  the  audacity 
to  state  that  ''he  hardly  knew  what  an  Indulgence  was." 
In  two  different  places  in  his  pamphlet  entitled  Hans 
Worst,  written  about  1541,  when  he  was  blinded  by 
rage  against  the  Qiurch,  he  solemnly  declares  that, 
"As  truly  as  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  has  redeemed  me 
I  did  not  know  what  an  Indulgence  was."  This  state- 
ment, notwithstanding  the  sacred  affirmation  with 
which  he  introduces  it,  is  to  say  the  least,  of  very 
doubtful  veracity.  To  express  himself  in  this  way  is, 
however,  rather  a  poor  compliment  for  a  Professor 
and  Doctor  of  Theology  to  pay  to  himself,  nor  can  it 
be  considered  as  very  prudent,  that  a  man  should  talk 
about  and  inveigh  against  things  of  which  he  confesses 
his  ignorance.  Indeed,  he  could  hardly  have  meant 
what  he  said  had  he  recalled  at  the  moment  the  teach- 
ings and  sermons  of  his  earlier  days,  when  he  held  and 
asserted   with   absolute   conviction   the   mind   of   the 


84  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Church  on  the  doctrine  of  Indulgences.  If  Luther, 
however,  was  really  ignorant  of  the  matter  he  had 
plenty  of  opportunities  of  learning  the  unadulterated 
teaching  of  the  Church.  He  could  have  been  accom- 
modated within  the  walls  of  his  own  University.  The 
nature  of  Indulgences  was  clearly  defined  in  ordinary 
manuals  for  the  use  of  the  clergy,  then  in  print,  such 
as  the  "Discipuliis  de  Eriiditione  CJiristi  Fidelium,"  is- 
sued at  Cologne  in  1504,  and  many  other  learned  theo- 
logical works.  Luther,  however,  needed  no  enlighten- 
ment on  the  subject.  He  knew  what  an  Indulgence 
was,  its  nature,  its  authority,  its  place  in  the  spiritual 
order,  and  was  quite  familiar  with  its  practice  in  the 
Church.  He  knew  that  an  Indulgence  was  simply  a 
remission  in  whole  or  in  part,  through  the  superabund- 
ant merits  of  Jesus  Christ  and  His  saints,  of  the  tem- 
poral punishment  due  to  God  on  account  of  sin  after 
the  guilt  and  eternal  punishment  have  been  remitted 
in  the  Sacrament  of  Penance.  He  knew  that  it  gave 
no  license  to  commit  sin  of  any  kind  or  in  any  form. 
He  knew  that  no  abuse  could  affect  an  Indulgence  in 
itself,  that  an  Indulgence  is  legitimate  apart  from  an 
abuse,  and  that  it  would  be  a  sacrilegious  crime  in  any 
one  whomsoever,  from  the  Pope  down  to  the  most 
humble  layman,  to  be  concerned  in  buying  or  selling 
Indulgences.  He  knew  that  Indulgences  were  never 
bartered  for  money  in  Germany  or  elsewhere  for  sins 
yet  to  be  committed.  He  knew  they  were  not  market- 
able commodities  and  that  no  traffic  or  sale  of  Indul- 
gences was  ever  authorized  or  countenanced  by  the 
authorities  of  the  Church.  Pie  knew  all  this  as  well 
as  any  enlightened  member  of  the  Church  in  his  day 
for  he  studied  the  whole  ins-and-outs  of  the  matter 
in  his  earlier  career.  His  onslaught  on  Indulgences 
was  not  made  from  any  lack  of  knowledge  of  their 
meaning  and  value. 

Luther  had  a  purpose  in  view  and  all  his  attacks  on 
Indulgences  were  intended  only  as  a  cloak  to  conceal 
the  real  scheme  he  nursed  in  his  rebellious  heart.  He 
might,  if  he  would,  help  to  correct  whatever  wrong 
was  noticeable  at  the  time,  but  instead  of  aiding  the 


Luther  and  Indulgences  85 

cause  of  right,  he  wilfully  and  maliciously  preferred 
to  profit  by  the  blunders  of  some  imprudent  underlings 
to  advance  his  nefarious  designs  which  aimed  at  noth- 
■  ing  less  than  the  weakening  and  eventual  destruction 
of  the  power  and  authority  of  the  Holy  See.  He  now 
began  adroitly  enough  to  throw  the  blame  of  whatever 
irregularities  existed  on  the  doctrine  itself,  not  only 
to  make  Indulgences  odious,  but  indirectly  to  discredit 
the  Pope  who  granted  them.  By  a  process  of  false 
reasoning  he  persuaded  himself  to  think,  ''that  Indul- 
gences are  not  of  faith,  because  not  taught  in  the  Bible, 
not  taught  by  Christ  and  His  Apostles ;  they  emanate.' 
he  said,  ''only  from  the  Pope."  He  thought  that  this 
pronouncement,  which  included  the  exclusive  value  of 
the  Bible  as  the  rule  of  faith,  was  incontrovertible. 
He  little  dreamt,  however,  that  in  advancing  this 
erroneous  doctrine  he  was  passing  sentence  on  him- 
self as  an  apostate  and  a  heretic.  He  must  now  be 
compelled  to  come  out  more  in  the  open  and  declare 
himself  more  explicitly.  To  do  this  it  was  necessary 
to  prove  that  besides  the  truths  explicitly  declared  in 
Holy  Writ  there  are  other  truths  in  the  Church  which 
its  members  are  equally  bound  to  believe  and  that  they 
comprise  all  those  doctrines  relating  to  faith  which 
are  defined  as  such  by  the  Apostolic  See. 

Much  of  the  greater  part  of  the  guffaws  Luther,  at 
this  time,  received  from  princes,  nobles,  robber  knights, 
debauched  scholars  and  the  mob,  was  due  to  the  in- 
sidious attacks  he  made  on  the  authority  of  the  Holy 
See  and  its  legitimate  head.  Tetzel  was  keen  enough 
to  notice  this  and  he  determined  in  the  interests  of 
truth  and  respect  for  legitimate  ecclesiastical  authority 
to  meet  the  situation.  Accordingly,  as  noted  before, 
he  issued  about  the  end  of  April,  15 18,  fifty  Theses  on 
the  power  of  the  Pope  to  show  "that  he  alone  pos- 
sesses the  right  to  decide  the  true  sense  and  meaning 
of  Scripture:  that  what  is  true  and  of  faith  about 
Indulgences,  only  the  Pope  can  decide ;  that  the  Church 
has  many  Catholic  truths  which  are  neither  expressly 
declared  in  the  canon  of  Scripture,  nor  explicitly  stated 
by  the  Church  Fathers;  that  all  doctrines  relating  to 


86  The  Facts  About  Luther 

faith  and  defined  as  such  by  the  ApostoHc  See,  are  to 
be  reckoned  among  Catholic  truths,  whether  or  not 
they  are  contained  expHcitly  in  the  Bible."  These 
propositions  were  strictly  in  the  spirit  of  the  scholastic 
theology  in  vogue  at  the  time,  and  served  to  raise  the 
contention  to  the  plane  of  principle. 

Luther  was  now  challenged  to  come  out  in  the  open 
and  declare  himself  clearly  on  the  Pope's  authority  in 
matters  of  faith  and  practice.  He  at  once  perceived 
what  a  stumbling  block  Tetzel  had  thrown  in  his  way. 
He  did  not  attempt  to  dispute  or  contradict  Tetzel's 
Fifty  Theses.  Had  he  done  so  he  must  have  plainly 
acknowledged  himself  a  heretic,  cut  himself  off  from 
all  escape  and  had  no  other  choice  left  than  that  of 
either  being  punished  as  a  heretic  or  making  a  recanta- 
tion. As  matters  stood  this  would  have  been  pre- 
mature, would  have  spoiled  all,  would  have  ruined  him 
and  his  cause.  He  was  not  prepared  as  yet  to  enter 
finally  on  the  terrible  tragedy  of  open  rebellion  against 
the  Church  of  God. 

Tetzel,  as  the  Dublin  Rez'iew  further  remarks,  had  not 
designated  Luther  personally  as  a  heretic.  But  Luther 
chose  to  assume  that  he  had  done  so  and  forthwith  let 
loose  a  storm  against  Tetzel  of  such  brutal  and  malig- 
nant invective  as  Luther  alone  was  capable  of.  Adopt- 
ing the  tone  of  an  injured  man,  a  man  shamefully  mis- 
understood, he  filled  Germany  with  hypocritical  as- 
severations of  his  orthodoxy  and  his  devotion  to  the 
See  of  Peter.  All  his  party  followed  in  the  pseudo 
Liberator's  wake.  The  heathen-minded  humanists, 
with  Ulrich  Von  Hutten,  the  notoriously  unprincipled 
libertine,  at  their  head,  were  especially  active  in  de- 
nouncing and  maligning  Tetzel.  They  singled  him  out 
as  a  butt  of  their  ribald  satire,  holding  him  up  to 
scorn  and  execration  as  the  very  impersonation  of 
every  imaginable  abuse  and  scandal.  They  used  every 
conceivable  means  known  to  the  abandoned  and  ignoble 
to  besmirch  the  character,  reputation,  and  influence  of 
Tetzel.  They  proclaimed  everywhere  to  ignorant  and 
unthinking  crowds  that  ''the  avaricious  monk"  as  they 
designated  him,  "sold  grace  for  money  at  the  highest 


Luther  and  Indulgences  87 

price  he  could,"  that  he  used  offensive  statements  res- 
pecting the  Blessed  \^irgin,  and  that  he  magnified  the 
effects  of  the  Indulgence  by  the  use  of  unseemly  com- 
parisons, all  to  ring  the  money  into  the  papal  coffer 
in  the  hope  of  freeing  souls  from  purgatory's  suffer- 
ings." They  put  the  most  horrid  blasphemies  into  his 
mouth,  so  horrid  that  we  would  be  ashamed  to  repro- 
duce them  here.  Plenty  of  mud  was  flung  at  Tetzel 
and  unfortunately  much  of  it  at  the  time  stuck  and 
has  done  service  ever  since.  The  story  of  Tetzel  and 
his  chest,  along  with  many  others  of  a  still  more 
profane  description,  are  still  told  to  the  incredulous 
although  they  have  been  time  and  again  refuted.  Schol- 
ars of  repute  nowadays  dare  not  repeat  or  reassert  the 
absurd  infamies.  The  testimony  against  such  a  course 
is  too  overwhelming  to  risk  exposure  and  defeat. 

The  campaign  of  lies,  slander  and  calumny  inaugur- 
ated and  carried  on  unceasingly  by  Luther  and  his 
quarrelsome  allies,  preyed  upon  the  sensitive  spirit  of 
the  gifted  preacher  and  gradually  his  health  gave  away. 
Wounded  by  the  rude  and  unchristian  treatment  he 
received  at  the  hands  of  unscrupulous  enemies,  and 
deeply  affected  by  the  sight  of  the  mischief  which  had 
been  wrought  by  the  religious  revolution  he  was  the 
first  to  foresee,  he  retired  to  the  pious  seclusion  of  his 
monastery,  where  after  a  short  while  he  died,  not  in 
disgrace,  as  his  malefactors  allege,  but  from  a  broken 
heart  due  to  the  persecution  he  had  suffered.  His 
death  occurred  August  ii,  15 19,  and  he  was  buried 
before  the  High  Altar  of  the  Dominican  Church  at 
Leipzic. 

"Tetzel  could  not  have  set  up  a  better  monument 
to  his  own  character,"  writes  Dr.  Grone,  "than  he  did 
in  the  grief  and  affliction  which  hastened  his  end.  The 
ruin  of  the  Church,  the  wild  infidelity  and  unspeak- 
able disorders,  which  the  triumph  of  Luther  must 
needs  entail  on  Germany — this  was  the  worm  that 
gnawed  his  vital  thread.  It  broke  his  heart  to  be 
forced  to  see  how  the  sincere  champions  of  the  old 
Church  truths  were  left  alone,  were  slandered,  despised 
and    misunderstood    by    their   own   party,    while    the 


88  The  i:^  acts  About  Luther 

mockers  and  revilers  of  the  immutable  doctrine  won 
applause  on  all  sides." 

"History,"  says  the  Catholic  Encyclopedia,  "presents 
few  characters  more  unfortunate  and  pathetic  than 
Tetzel.  Among  his  contemporaries  the  victim  of  the 
most  corrosive  ridicule,  every  foul  charge  laid  at  his 
door,  every  blasphemous  utterance  placed  in  his  mouth, 
a  veritable  literature  of  fiction  and  fable  built  about 
his  personalit}^  in  modern  history  held  up  as  a  prover- 
bial mountebank  and  oily  harlequin,  denied  even  the 
support  and  sympathy  of  his  own  allies — Tetzel  had 
to  await  the  light  of  modern  critical  scrutiny,  not  only 
for  a  moral  rehabilitation,  but  also  for  vindication  as 
a  soundly  trained  theologian  and  a  monk  of  irreproach- 
able deportment."  (Paulus,  "Johann  Tetzel,"  Mainz, 
1899;  Hermann,  "Johann  Tetzel,"  Frankfort,  1882; 
Grone,  "Tetzel  und  Luther,"  Soest,  i860.) 

To  describe  the  Dominican  friar  as  the  cause  of  the 
whole  movement  which  began  in  15 17  is,  in  view  of  the 
facts,  the  merest  legend.  "Notwithstanding  the  ef- 
forts," as  Grisar  says,  "which  Luther  made  to  repre- 
sent the  matter  in  this  or  a  similar  light,  it  has  been 
clearly  proved  that  his  own  spiritual  development  was 
the  cause  or  at  least  the  principal  cause.  Other  fac- 
tors co-operated  more  or  less.  His  false  ideas  on  grace 
and  justification  and  good  works,  and  his  determina- 
tion to  put  a  stop  to  the  abuses  connected  with  Indul- 
gences, led  him  in  1517  to  make  a  general  attack,  even 
though  partly  veiled,  on  the  whole  ecclesiastical  system 
of  Indulgences." 

If  we  keep  this  in  view  we  can  easily  understand 
what  Luther  wrote  to  his  dying  antagonist  in  the  hope 
of  affording  him  some  consolation  when  he  was  suf- 
fering keenly  from  the  reproaches  the  Reformer 
heaped  upon  him.  In  this  letter  Luther  says :  ''You 
need  not  trouble  and  distress  yourself,  for  the  matter 
did  not  begin  with  you.  This  child,  indeed,  had  quite 
another  father."  (De  Wette,  Seidemann,  6,  18.)  He 
himself  was  that  father.  He  started  the  controversy, 
being,  says  his  pupil  Oldecop,  "by  nature  proud  and 
audacious."    At  the  outset  of  the  trouble  it  was  stated 


Luther  and  Indulgences  89 

that  as  soon  as  Luther  heard  from  Staiipitz  at  Grimma 
of  Tetzel's  behavior,  he  exclaimed:  "Please  God,  I 
will  knock  a  hole  in  his  drum."  This  saying  has  done 
service  for  the  longest  time,  but  no  scholar  to-day  re- 
hearses it  because  it  lacks  all  basis  of  veritable  data. 
Luther's  rebellion  against  the  Church  would,  however, 
have  taken  place,  if  no  Indulgence  had  been  promul- 
gated or  if  Tetzel  had  never  been  born. 

In  due  time  Archbishop  Albert  submitted  Luther's 
Theses  to  his  board  of  consultors  at  Aschaffenburg 
and  to  the  professors  of  the  University  of  Mayence. 
All  the  examiners  gave  the  Theses  long  and  careful 
study.  After  due  deliberation  they  concluded  as  a 
result  of  their  findings,  that  the  Theses  were  of  an 
heretical  character  and  that  proceedings  against  their 
author  should  be  taken.  A  report  of  their  examination 
and  the  conclusions  arrived  at,  together  with  a  copy 
of  the  Theses,  were  then  regularly  forwarded  to  the 
Holy  See.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  first  judicial 
proceeding  against  Luther  did  not  emanate  from 
Tetzel,  as  some  authors  falsely  allege. 

This  action  on  the  part  of  the  authorities  did  not 
please  Luther  as  he  was  anxious  to  continue  as  long 
as  possible  in  good  favor  with  the  Pope.  Shortly  after 
he  learned  of  the  official  proceeding  he  wrote  to  his 
friend  Langus  and  styled  the  archbishop  and  the 
others  who  examined  and  condemned  his  proposi- 
tions, ''Bufifoons  and  Earthworms."  The  calling  of 
names,  as  we  see,  was  no  trouble  to  this  disappointed 
man.  Rome  was  slow  and  lenient  in  her  action.  Per- 
haps the  Pope  was  right  in  favoring  delay.  Under 
date  of  Trinity  Sunday,  ]\Iay  30,  15 18,  Luther  wrote 
to  Leo  X.  a  letter  professing  the  utmost  respect  for 
His  Holiness  and  declaring  that  he  submitted  himself 
in  the  grave  circumstances  unreservedly  to  his  deci- 
sion. With  his  wonted  disingenuousness  he  said  of  his 
Theses  and  strange  doctrines :  'They  are  disputations, 
not  doctrines,  not  dogmas,  set  out  as  usual  in  an  enig- 
matical form ;  yet  could  I  have  foreseen  it,  I  should 
certainly  have  taken  part  on  my  side,  that  they  shoul  I 
be  more  easv  to  understand.     Were  I  such  a  man  as 


90  The  Facts  About  Luther' 

they  wish  me  to  appear,  and  all  things  had  not  been 
rightly  handled  by  me  in  the  course  of  disputation,  it 
could  not  be  that  the  most  illustrious  Prince  Frederick, 
Duke  of  Saxony,  Elector  of  the  Empire,  would  permit 
such  a  pest  in  his  university,  pre-eminent  as  he  is  for 
his  attachment  to  the  Catholic  apostolic  truth.  Where- 
fore, most  blessed  Father,  I  offer  myself  prostrate  at 
the  feet  of  your  Holiness  and  give  myself  up  to  you 
with  all  .that  I  am  or  have :  quicken,  slay,  call,  recall, 
approve,  reprove,  as  shall  please  Thee.  It  rests  with 
your  Holiness  to  promote  or  prevent  my  undertaking, 
to  declare  it  right  or  wrong.  Whatever  happens,  I 
recognize  the  voice  of  your  Holiness  as  that  of  Christ 
abiding  and  speaking  in  Thee.  If  I  deserve  death,  I 
do  not  refuse  to  die."  A  more  complete  expression  of 
submission  to  the  judgment  of  the  Apostolic  See  could 
hardly  be  formulated,  but  Luther's  actions  thereafter 
did  not  correspond  with  his  language.  The  insincerity 
manifested  in  his  letter  to  Leo  X.  can  be  explained  only 
by  the  uncommon  duplicity^  of  his  character. 

Very  shortly  after  this  letter  to  Leo  X.,  owing  to  a 
variety  of  circumstances,  especially  the  troubles  which 
menaced  Germany  on  account  of  the  religious  dissen- 
sions then  existing,  Emperor  Maximilian  formally  de- 
nounced the  agitator  to  the  Holy  See.  Luther  was 
imm.ediately  cited  to  appear  at  Rom.e  within  sixty  days 
to  answer  before  judges  appointed  by  His  Holiness, 
in  regard  to  the  doctrines  he  had  put  forth.  The 
Elector  of  Saxony,  the  ruling  sovereign  of  the  country 
to  which  Luther  belonged,  in  the  meantime  requested 
the  Pope  to  dispense  with  his  personal  appearance  in 
answer  to  the  citation  and  asked  that  instead  of  going 
to  Rome  he  might  be  allowed  to  answer  for  himself 
before  a  Cardinal  Legate  in  Germany.  Rome  con- 
sented and  Cardinal  Cajetan,  a  man  remarkable  for  his 
erudition  and  greatly  beloved  by  the  workingmen  of 
Rome  because  he  had  espoused  their  cause  against  the 
usurers,  was  detailed  to  give  Luther  a  hearing  and  to 
endeavor  to  call  him  back  from  his  errors.  The 
Cardinal  met  Luther  at  Augsburg  on  October  ii,  15 18. 
All  patient  and  condescending  he  exhorted  Luther  to 


Luther  and  Indulgences  91 

renounce  his  errors  and  to  return  like  a  repenting  child 
to  his  mother,  the  Church.  Luther  professed  a  willing- 
ness to  disavow  any  expressions,  if  the  legate  con- 
vinced him  that  they  were  erroneous,  but  the  Nuncio 
was  not  to  be  led  into  any  dispute.  He  told  the  wilful 
man  that  he  was  there  to  receive  the  renunciation  of 
his  errors,  not  to, argue.  "What  error  have  I  taught?" 
asked  Luther.  Cardinal  Cajetan  presented  two  errors. 
First,  "That  the  merits  of  Christ  are  not  the  treasures 
of  Indulgences."  Second,  "That  faith  alone  is  sufficient 
for  salvation."  He  showed  decisions  of  the  Holy  See 
covering  the  ground  and  again  called  on  Luther  to  re- 
nounce his  errors.  The  kind  oflices  of  the  Cardinal 
were  useless  and  the  meeting  terminated  without  ben- 
eficial results.  Luther,  how^ever,  asked  for  a  delay 
of  three  days,  which  was  granted.  On  the  morning 
following  the  conversation  with  the  Cardinal,  he  sent 
a  protest  to  his  Eminence,  declaring  that,  "he  had  never 
intended  to  teach  anything  offensive  to  Catholic  doc- 
trine, to  the  Holy  Scriptures,  to  the  authority  of  the 
Fathers  or  to  the  decrees  of  the  Pope."  Luther  did 
not  wait  for  the  expiration  of  the  time  he  requested. 
He  departed  from  Augsburg  in  secrecy,  and  in  a  few 
days  afterward,  he  gave  the  world  another  proof  of  his 
duplicity  by  having  affixed  to  the  gate  of  the  Carmelite 
monastery  where  he  had  lodged,  an  appeal  to  the  effect 
that  if  he  had  attacked  Indulgences,  it  was  because  they 
w^ere  not  enjoined  by  God.  His  judges,  he  averred, 
were  not  to  be  trusted;  he  had  not  gone  to  Rome,  be- 
cause, there,  where  justice  once  abided,  homicide  now 
dwelt.  Finally,  he  "appealed  from  the  Pope  ill-in- 
formed to  the  Pope  better-instructed." 

One  more  attempt  was  made  by  Rome  later  on  to 
settle  the  matter  without  coming  to  extremes.  A  second 
legate  w^as  sent  to  Germany.  Charles  Miltiz,  a  young 
Saxon  nobleman  in  minor  orders,  who  had  spent  some 
years  in  Rome,  was  chosen  for  the  office.  The  appoint- 
ment w^as  unfortunate  and  abortive.  Miltiz  lacked  the 
prudence,  tact,  energy  and  straightforwardness  his 
difficult  mission  demanded.  He,  however,  drew  from 
Luther  an  act  which  if  it  "is  no  recantation,  is  at  least 


92  The  Facts  About  Luther 

remarkably  like  one."  (Beard  274.)  'In  it  he  promised 
to  observe  silence  if  his  assailants  did  the  same;  com- 
plete submission  to  the  Pope;  to  publish  a  plain  state- 
ment to  the  public  advocating  loyalty  to  the  Church ; 
and  to  place  the  whole  vexatious  cause  in  the  hands  of 
a  delegated  bishop."  The  meeting  closed  with  a  banquet 
and  embraces,  tears  of  joy  and  a  kiss  of  peace,  only  to 
be  disregarded  and  ridiculed  afterwards  by  Luther. 
This  interview  took  place  at  Altenburg  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  year  15 19. 

Shortly  after  this  meeting  on  March  3,  15 19,  Luther 
addressed  another  letter  to  the  Pope  overflowing  as 
usual  with  expressions  of  the  greatest  loyalty  and  most 
perfect  submission.  In  it,  amongst  other  things,  he 
"calls  God  and  man  to  witness  that  he  has  never 
wished  and  does  not  now  desire  to  touch  the  Roman 
Church  or  the  Pope's  sacred  authority;  and  that  he 
acknowledges  most  explicitly  that  this  Church  rules 
over  all  and  that  nothing  in  heaven  or  in  earth  is 
superior  to  it,  save  only  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord."  Only 
two  weeks  before  he  made  this  pronouncement  calling 
God  and  man  to  witness  his  words,  he  wrote  to  his 
friend  Scheurl :  'T  have  often  said  that  hitherto  I  have 
only  been  playing.  Now  at  last  we  shall  have  to  act 
seriously  against  the  Roman  authority  and  against 
Roman  arrogance."  (De  Wette  i,  230.)  This  detest- 
able hypocrisy  is  further  confirmed  when  ten  days 
after  sending  to  the  Pope  the  letter  of  March  3rd,  he 
declared  to  his  friend  Spalatinus:  'T  do  not  mind 
telling  you,  between  ourselves,  that  I  am  not  sure 
whether  the  Pope  is  Antichrist  himself  or  only  his 
apostle."     (De  Wette  I,  239.) 

A  terrible  struggle  was  nov/  going  on  in  Luther.  His 
mind  was  divided  between  his  still  remaining  respect 
for  ecclesiastical  authority  on  the  one  hand  and  his 
personal  pride  and  attachment  to  his  own  opinions  on 
the  other.  At  a  later  period  of  his  life  he  said  of  him- 
self, that  "he  was  in  such  a  state  of  mind  at  this  time 
as  to  be  almost  out  of  his  senses ;  that  he  was  scarcely 
conscious  whether  he  were  awake  or  asleep:  and  that 
it  was  not  without  a  severe  struggle  and  great  difficulty 


Luther  and  Indulgences  93 

that  he  finally  conquered  his  conviction  that  he  ought 
to  "hear  the  Church."  As  late  as  the  15th  of  January, 
1520,  he  wrote  to  the  newly  elected  Emperor,  declaring 
that  he  would  die  a  true  and  obedient  son  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church  and  expressing  his  willingness  to  submit 
to  the  decision  of  all  the  universities  whose  impartial- 
ity could  not  be  suspected.  But  in  proportion  as  he 
found  the  authority  of  the  Church  and  of  learned  uni- 
versities ranged  against  him,  exactly  in  the  same  pro- 
portion did  his  adhesion  to  his  own  opinions  grow  more 
and  more  obstinate. 

Luther  seemed  not  to  be  able  to  free  himself  from 
his  errors.  As  time  went  on  he  grew  bolder  in  his 
assertions  and  astonished  his  friends  by  advancing  even 
more  daring  absurdities.  In  his  advanced  system,  de- 
nying dogma  after  dogma,  there  was  no  longer  room 
for  Indulgences  and  Confession,  nor  for  Purgatory, 
nor  for  honoring  any  saint,  since  there  are  no  saints, 
but  all  remain  corrupt  for  all  eternity,  only  the  cor- 
ruption is  covered  by  the  cloak  of  Christ's  merits. 
''Man,"  he  says,  "since  the  fall  of  our  first  parents  had 
not  possessed  any  liberty  whatever  and  that  his  works, 
whether  good  or  bad,  were  always  offensive  to  God." 
He  could  not  see  that  in  denying  human  liberty  he  was 
expressing  an  opinion  that  is  not  only  as  false  as  it  is 
repugnant  to  common  sense,  but  oft'ensive  not  only  to 
God  but  his  creatures.  To  secure  the  support  of  the 
masses,  he  flattered  these  by  declaring  that  "all  Chris- 
tians are  priests,  all  have  equal  authority  to  interpret 
the  Bible  for  themselves  and  there  is  no  difference 
among  the  baptized,  priest,  bishop,  pope,  except  the 
offices  assigned  to  some."  Nor  did  he  forget  the  secular 
princes,  who  were  impervious  to  all  religious  impulses 
and  whose  support  he  was  endeavoring  to  secure 
before  his  final  breach  with  the  Church,  for  to  them 
he  announced  the  flattering  teaching:  "For  as  much 
as  the  temporal  power  is  ordained  of  God  to  punish 
the  wicked  and  to  protect  the  good,  therefore  it  must 
be  allowed  to  do  its  work  unhindered  on  the  whole 
Christian  body,  without  respect  to  persons,  whether  it 
strike  popes,  bishops,  priests,  monks,  nuns  or  whom 


94  The  Facts  About  Luther 

it  will."  "The  secular  power,"  he  maintained,  "should 
summon  a  free  council"  which  "should  reorganize  the 
constitution  of  the  Church  from-  its  foundation  and 
must  liberate  Germany  from  the  Roman  robbers,  from 
the  scandalous,  devilish  rule  of  the  Romans."  *'It  is 
stated,"  he  adds,  "that  there  is  no  finer  government  in 
the  world  than  that  of  the  Turks,  who  have  neither  a 
spiritual  nor  a  secular  code  of  law,  but  only  their 
Koran.  And  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  there  is  no 
more  disagreeable  system  of  rule  than  ours,  with  our 
Canon  Law  and  our  Common  Law,  whilst  no  class  any 
longer  obeys  either  natural  reason  or  the  Holy  Scrip- 
ture." 

When  this  teaching  of  Luther,  given  in  part  only, 
is  considered,  it  is  easily  seen  he  was  no  longer  a  Cath- 
olic although  he  continued  to  celebrate  Mass  at  Cath- 
olic altars  and  maintained  that  he  was  sound  in  the 
faith.  No  wonder  that  Duke  George,  astonished  and 
provoked  at  the  bold  heretical  assertions  of  the  in- 
solent monk,  exclaimed  in  an  angry  voice,  "This  man's 
teaching  is  dangerous."  The  arbitrating  universities 
of  Cologne  and  Louvain,  together  with  that  of  Paris, 
condemned  his  teaching  and  declared  it  heretical. 
Luther  had  shortly  before  looked  upon  these  judges  as 
"his  masters  in  theology" ;  he  now  called  them  "mules 
and  asses,  epicurean  swine."  Rome  finally  discussed 
Luther's  new  doctrines  with  patient  care  and  critical 
calmness,  and  was,  at  last,  compelled  to  denounce  them 
as  ^'eccentric,  radical  and  untenable." 

There  was  a  limit  to  the  patience  of  Leo  X.  The 
gentle  and  learned  Pope  pitied  the  venom,  hatred  and 
indomitable  stubbornness  and  pride  of  Luther,  but 
considering  the  disturbed  condition  of  religious  affairs 
created  in  Germany  by  the  agitator's  misguided  efforts 
and  the  religious  pantheistical  mysticism  his  system  was 
engendering,  he  was  compelled  to  act  in  the  interest 
of  peace  and  truth.  He  accordingly  issued  a  Bull, 
written  in  a  tone  rather  of  paternal  affliction  than  of 
just  severity,  in  which  the  unfortunate  man's  errors 
were  denounced  in  forty-one  propositions,  some  of 
which  were  qualified  as  evidently  heretical  and  others 


Luther  and  Indulgences  95 

as  rash  and  scandalous.  "Imitating  the  clemency  of 
the  Almighty,"  Leo  says,  "who  wills  not  the  death  of 
a  sinner,  but  that  he  should  be  converted  and  live,  we 
shall  forget  all  injuries  done  to  us  and  the  Apostolic 
See,  and  we  shall  do  all  we  can  to  make  him  give  up 
his  errors.  By  the  depths  of  God's  mercy  and  the 
blood  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  shed  for  the  Redemp- 
tion of  man  and  the  foundation  of  the  Church,  we 
expect  and  pray  Luther  and  his  followers  to  cease 
disturbing  the  peace,  the  unity,  and  the  power  of  the 
Church."  Thus  speaks  the  generous  heart  of  the  Pope 
who  apparently  suffers  while  he  is  compelled  to  chas- 
tise a  rebellious  son  and  declare  him  excommunicated 
unless  he  should  retract  his  errors  at  the  expiration 
of  sixty  days. 

Luther's  pride  would  not  suffer  him  to  submit.  His 
separation  from  the  Church,  her  doctrine,  her  public 
worship  and  her  constitution  was  complete.  Branded 
now  as  a  heretic,  his  wrath  no  longer  knew  any  bounds 
of  moderation.  He  immediately  issued  an  insolent 
diatribe  entitled,  "Against  the  Execrable  Bull  of  Anti- 
christ/' "At  length,"  he  says,  "thanks  to  the  zeal  of 
my  friends,  I  have  seen  this  bat  in  all  its  beauty.  In 
truth,  I  know  not  whether  the  Papists  are  joking.  This 
must  be  the  work  of  John  Eck,  the  man  of  lies  and 
iniquities,  the  accursed  heretic  ...  I  maintain  that  the 
author  of  this  Bull  is  Antichrist :  I  curse  it  as  a  blas- 
phemy against  the  Son  of  God  ...  I  trust  that  every 
Christian  who  accepts  this  Bull  will  suffer  the  torments 
of  hell  .  .  .  See  how  I  retract,  daughter  of  a  Soap 
Bull  ...  It  is  said  that  the  donkey  sings  badly,  simply 
because  he  pitches  his  voice  on  too  high  a  key.  Cer- 
tainly, this  Bull  would  sound  more  agreeable,  were 
its  blasphemies  not  directed  against  heaven.  Where 
are  you,  emperors,  kings  and  princes  of  the  earth,  that 
you  tolerate  the  hellish  voice  of  Antichrist?  Leo  X. 
and  you,  the  Roman  Cardinals,  I  tell  you  to  your 
faces  .  .  .  Renounce  your  satanic  blasphemies  against 
Jesus  Christ." 

Luther  followed  up  this  imprecation  and  invective 
on   Rome  by  publicly  burnings  on   the    loth   day   of 


96  The  Facts  About  Luther 

December,  1520,  at  the  eastern  gate  of  Wittenburg, 
opposite  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Cross,  in  the  presence 
of  many  students,  who  jeered  and  sang  ribald  drink- 
ing songs,  the  Bull  of  Leo  X.,  and  all  his  writings,  to- 
gether with  the  works  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  and  other 
Catholic  theologians.  On  the  day  after  this  contemp- 
tuous exhibition,  Luther  preached  to  the  people  and 
said :  "Yesterday  I  burned  in  the  public  square  the 
devilish  works  of  the  Pope;  and  I  wish  that  it  was 
the  Pope,  that  is,  the  Papal  See,  that  was  consumed. 
If  you  do  not  separate  from  Rome,  there  is  no  salva- 
tion for  your  souls." 

The  Gospel  of  Luther  is  now  set  up  against  the 
Gospel  of  the  good  and  gentle  Jesus.  Introduced  in 
hatred  of  the  Pope  and  with  the  vain  promise  of  salva- 
tion to  all  who  abandon  him  whom  the  Master  ap- 
pointed to  preserve  the  unity  and  the  well-being  of 
His  Church,  it  went  on  its  course  of  protestation  with 
little  avail,  for  the  Church  of  Christ  still  remains  and 
the  office  of  Peter  to  instruct  in  sound  doctrine  still 
continues  and  will  to  the  end  of  time. 

Luther,  whilst  he  was  presumably  a  member  of  the 
Church,  denounced  Indulgences  in  the  bitterest  terms, 
much  to  the  delight  of  all  his  followers.  But  when 
from  a  reformer  he  becomes  a  revolutionist  and  with- 
out credentials  or  authority  started  his  own  church,  he 
has  nothing  to  say  concerning  the  notorious  scandals 
that  disgraced  its  career.  Pie  was,  on  the  contrary, 
most  kindly  disposed  toward  it.  As  every  student  of 
history  knows  he  tried  his  hand  at  dispensations  and 
granted  many  of  which  the  Catholic  Church  was  never 
guilty.  Thus,  for  example,  he  dispensed  himself  and 
Katherine  Yon  Bora  from  their  vows  of  celibacy ;  he 
dispensed  every  husband  from  his  fidelity  to  marital 
vows  in  his  shameless  utterance  in  a  public  sermon, 
"si  nolit  domina,  veniat  ancilla."  (Sermon  De  Matri- 
monio.)  He  gave  a  dispensation  to  Philip  of  Hesse  to 
commit  bigamy  and  his  reward  was  four  "fuder"  of 
wine  and  a  protection  of  Protestantism.  Bucer,  who 
was  a  party  to  that  heathenish,  infamous  concession, 
admits  that  *'the  whole  Reformation  was  one  grand 


Luther  and  Indulgences  97 

indulgence  for  libertinism."  Here  are  his  words: 
"The  greater  part  of  the  people  seem  only  to  have 
embraced  the  Gospel  in  order  to  shake  off  the  yoke  of 
discipline  and  the  obligation  of  fasting  and  penance, 
which  rested  upon  them  in  popery,  and  tliat  they  may 
live  according  to  their  own  pleasure,  enjoying  their 
lusts  and  lawless  appetites  without  control.  That  was 
the  reason  they  lent  a  willing  ear  to  the  teaching  of 
justification  by  faith  alone  and  not  by  good  works,  for 
the  latter  of  which  they  had  no  relish."  (Bucer  De 
Regn.  I,  c  I,  4.)  Bucer's  words  ought  to  bring  the 
blush  of  shame  to  the  face  of  all  who  in  the  hour  of 
the  blasphemy  of  despair  attempt  to  vilify  and  mis- 
represent the  Church  of  God.  They  ought  to  remem- 
ber also  that  Luther's  special  brand  of  dispensations 
are  not  altogether  out  of  market  yet. 

In  the  theological  lectures  on  the  Psalms,  which 
Luther,  when  still  a  Catholic,  delivered  as  Professor  in 
the  years  15 13-15 16,  he  described  from  time  to  time 
the  peculiarities  and  distinguishing  features  of  heretics. 
**The  principal  sin  of  heretics  is  their  pride,"  he  says. 
*Tn  their  pride  they  insist  on  their  own  opinions... 
Frequently  they  serve  God  with  great  fervor  and  they 
do  not  intend  any  evil;  but  they  serve  God  according 
to  their  own  will  .  .  .  Even  when  refuted,  they  are 
ashamed  to  retract  their  errors  and  to  change  their 
words  .  .  .  They  think  they  are  guided  directly  by 
God  .  .  .  The  things  that  have  been  established  for 
centuries  and  for  which  so  many  martyrs  have  suffered 
death,  they  begin  to  treat  as  doubtful  questions  .  .  . 
They  interpret  (the  Bible)  according  to  their  own 
heads  and  their  own  particular  views  and  carry  their 
own  opinions  into  it.' 

This  description  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired.  Luther 
tells  most  accurately  the  traits  of  the  false  prophets 
and  lying  teachers  whom  the  God  of  truth  would  have 
his  followers  avoid.  Think  you,  did  the  unfortunate 
man  realize  when  he  described  the  characteristics  of 
those  who  cause  dissensions  in  the  Church  and  among 
the  brethren,  that  he  was  drawing  his  own  portrait  in 
later  times?    If  he  did,  then  he  should  have  remem- 


98 


The  Facts  About  Luther 


bered  the  words  of  the  great  St.  Paul:  "I  beseech 
you,  brethren,  to  mark  them  who  cause  dissensions  and 
offences  contrary  to  the  doctrine  which  you  have 
learned  and  to  avoid  them."     (Romans  XVL  17.) 


CHAPTER  IV. 
Luther  and  Justification. 

THERE  are  few  tenets  of  the  Catholic  Church  so 
little  understood,  or  so  grossly  misrepresented  by 
her  adversaries,  as  her  doctrine  regarding  Justification 
or  Sanctification.  Many,  outside  the  Church,  make  the 
mistake  of  supposing  that  the  Catholic  doctrine  ascribes 
a  justifying  and  saving  efficacy  to  a  mere  intellectual 
submission  to  Church  authority,  and  a  mere  external 
compliance  with  its  precepts  without  reference  to  the 
interior  disposition  of  the  soul  toward  God,  or  recog- 
nition of  the  merits  of  Christ  as  the  source  of  all  the 
supernatural  excellence  and  value  of  good  works. 
Most  Protestants  are  under  the  impression  that  the 
Catholic  substitutes  the  merits  of  the  Blessed  Virgin 
Mary,  the  merits  of  the  Saints,  and  his  own  merits,  as 
an  independent  ground  of  justification,  in  lieu  of  the 
merits  of  Christ.  They  believe,  moreover,  that  merit 
is  ascribed  to  mere  external  works,  such  as  fasting, 
assisting  at  mass,  and  performing  ceremonial  rites  or 
penitential  labors,  on  account  of  the  mere  physical  na- 
ture, and  extent  of  the  works  done,  without  reference 
to  the  motive  from  which  they  proceed.  These,  and 
other  calumnies  or  rather  blasphemies  of  a  similar 
nature,  are  frequently  and  confidently  repeated  in 
popular  sermons  and  controversial  tracts  until  non- 
Catholics  come  to  reject  what  they  suppose  to  be  Catho- 
lic doctrine,  but  which  is  frequently  only  a  rejection 
of  opinions  attributed  by  mistake  to  the  Catholic 
Church. 

What  our  adversaries  allege  on  the  question  of  jus- 
tification is  not  only  a  misapprehension,  but  a  travesty 
on  genuine  Catholic  teaching  and  the  underlying  pur- 
pose of  the  misrepresentations  of  the  true  doctrine  of 
the  Church  is  to  prevent,  if  possible,  all  who  are  not 
of  the  household  of  faith  from  ascertaining  with  cer- 
tainty the  exact  and  complete  sense  of  the  doctrine 


100  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Christ  has  commanded  us  to  beheve  and  the  law  He 
has  commanded  us  to  keep  under  penalty  of  eternal 
condemnation.  The  sooner  the  opinions  attributed  by 
malice  or  by  mistake  to  the  Catholic  Church  are  ex- 
amined carefully  and  candidly  in  relationship  with 
genuine  Catholic  doctrine,  the  better  for  the  interests 
of  souls  who  long  for  the  truth  and  who  earnestly 
desire  the  spread  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth. 
To  all,  who  hold  the  views  we  have  alluded  to  and  who 
labor  under  a  misapprehension  of  the  Church's  teach- 
ing regarding  the  question  of  man's  justification,  we 
wish  to  say,  that  so  far  from  fathering  the  impious  and 
absurd  doctrines  our  adversaries  allege  we  maintain, 
the  Catholic  Church  rejects,  condemns  and  anathema- 
tizes them. 

It  is,  then,  false,  and  notoriously  false,  that  Catholics 
believe,  or  in  any  age  did  believe,  that  they  could  justify 
themselves  by  their  own  proper  merits ;  or  that  they 
can  do  the  least  good  in  the  order  of  salvation  without 
the  grace  of  God  merited  for  them  by  Jesus  Christ; 
or  that  we  can  deserve  this  grace  by  anything  we  have 
the  natural  power  of  doing;  or  that  leave  to  commit 
sin,  or  even  the  pardon  of  any  sin  which  has  been 
committed,  can  be  purchased  of  any  person  whomso- 
ever ;  or  that  the  essence  of  religion  and  our  hopes  of 
salvation  consist  in  forms  and  ceremonies  or  in  other 
exterior  things.  What  the  Catholic  Church  teaches 
and  ever  has  taught  her  children  is  to  trust  for  mercy, 
grace  and  salvation  to  the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Nevertheless,  she  asserts  that  we  have  free-will,  and 
that  this  being  assisted  by  Divine  grace  can  and  must 
co-operate  to  our  justification  by  faith,  sorrow  for  our 
sins  and  other  corresponding  acts  of  virtue  which 
God  will  not  fail  to  develop  in  us  if  we  do  not  throw 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  them.  Thus  is  all  honor  and 
merit  ascribed  to  the  Creator,  and  every  defect  and 
sin  attributed  to  the  creature. 

The  false  views  which  have  been  circulated  concern- 
ing man's  justification,  and  which  have  for  the  last 
four  hundred  years  done  service  against  truth,  orig- 


Luther  and  Justification  101 

inated  in  the  erratic  brain  of  Martin  Luther,  whose 
career  evidenced  the  cold  fact  that  he  was  incapable 
either  of  hard  reasoning  or  clear  thinking.  We  do  not 
wish  by  this  remark  to  insinuate  that  the  "Reformer" 
was  not  endowed  with  talent  of  a  high  order,  but,  as 
every  student  of  his  history  knows,  his  thought  on 
serious  topics  most  frequently  was  strikingly  confused. 
He  was  not  an  exact  thinker,  and  being  unable  to 
analyze  an  idea  into  its  constituents,  as  is  necessary  for 
one  who  will  apprehend  it  correctly,  he  failed  to  grasp 
questions  which  by  the  general  mass  of  the  people  were 
thoroughly  and  correctly  understood.  How  he  missed 
and  confounded  the  consecrated  teaching  on  man's 
justification  is  a  case  in  point.  He  allowed  himself  to 
cultivate  an  unnecessary  antipathy  to  so-called  "holi- 
ness by  works"  and  this  attitude,  combined  with  his  ten- 
dency to  look  at  the  worst  side  of  things  and  his  knowl- 
edge of  some  real  abuses  then  prevalent  in  the  practice 
of  works,  doubtless  contributed  to  develop  his  dislike 
for  good  works  in  general  and  led  him  by  degrees  to 
strike  at  the  very  roots  of  the  Catholic  system  of  sacra- 
ments and  grace,  of  penance  and  satisfaction,  in  fact, 
all  the  instruments  or  means  instituted  by  God  both 
for  conferring  and  increasing  His  saving  relationship 
with  man.  The  extraordinary  exaggerations  of  which 
he  was  guilty  in  this  regard  must  be  imputed,  not  to 
the  Church's  teaching,  but  to  the  peculiar  notions  he 
formed  of  it  in  the  confusion  of  his  own  thoughts — as 
we  shall  see  later  on. 

The  Catholic  Church  has  always  insisted  upon  the 
necessity  of  being  "perfect  eve.i  as  Our  Heavenly  Father 
is  perfect/'  by  such  an  entire  subjugation  of  our  passions 
and  a  conformity  of  our  will  with  that  of  God,  that 
"our  conversation,''  according  to  St.  Paul,  "may  he  in 
heaven"  while  we  are  yet  living  here  on  earth.  This 
fundamental  truth  Luther  knew  well.  Early  in  his 
career  he  ambitioned,  as  was  right,  to  exemplify  the 
teaching  of  the  Church  in  his  life.  He  desired  to  be 
perfect,  to  reach  justification  and  to  become  a  great 
saint.    For  a  time  he  adopted  the  approved  and  neces- 


102  The  Facts  About  Luther 

sary  means  whereby  his  heart's  desire  for  perfection 
might  be  reaHzed.  In  an  evil  moment,  however,  he  un- 
fortunately allowed  himself  to  forget  the  indispensable 
necessity  of  humility  which  is  the  groundwork  of  all 
the  virtues,  and  by  which,  says  St.  Bernard,  "from  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  ourselves  we  become  little  in 
our  own  cstimatfon/'  Although  this  lesson  was 
strongly  enforced  by  Christ  and  His  disciples,  yet  he 
seemed  to  entirely  overlook  it,  and  gradually  he  became 
a  prey  to  spiritual  pride,  the  prolific  source  of  all  evil. 
Dominated  by  this  dangerous  spirit,  he  grew  careless 
in  the  use  of  the  ordinary  sane  and  prudent  means  sanc- 
tioned by  all  the  masters  of  the  spiritual  life  to  ac- 
quire true  peace  of  heart  and  perfect  union  with  God.  To 
the  exclusion  of  all  and  every  counsel  of  the  experi- 
enced in  the  direction  of  souls,  he,  in  a  spirit  of  un- 
bounded self-sufficiency,  imagined  he  could  acquire 
perfection  by  his  own  peculiar  methods  and  exertions. 
As  a  result  oi  his  mistaken  determination  to  reject  every 
wise  rule  laid  down  for  the  acquirement  of  perfection, 
he  went  from  one  extreme  to  another  until  he  ex- 
hausted himself  vainly  in  fasts,  prayers  and  mortifica- 
tions. Moderation  and  common  sense  in  his  case 
seemed  to  have  been  unknown  qualities.  When  at 
length  the  thought  dawned  on  him  that  he  had  not  been 
able  in  spite  of  all  his  singular,  excessive,  imprudent 
practices  of  piety  to  hide  from  himself  the  sinfulness 
of  his  nature  and  the  continual  violence  of  his  passions, 
and  that  he  had  still  to  struggle  with  temptation,  he  was 
plunged  more  and  more  into  sadness,  desolation,  and 
terror  of  God's  justice.  At  this  time  he  seemed  to 
forget  that  if  God's  justice  avenged  sin,  it  also  re- 
warded true  virtue.  He  should  have  known  that  the 
Catholic  Church,  of  which  he  was  a  member,  never 
expected  any  of  her  subjects  to  propitiate  God  with  their 
own  works  exclusively.  She  always  taught  her  chil- 
dren that  over  and  above  the  performance  of  legitimate 
and  approved  works  of  piety,  they  were  directed  to  put 
their  trust  for  the  mastery  of  the  flesh  in  the  infinite 
merits  of  the  Redeemer  and  discharge  their  duties  in 


Luther  and  Justification  108 

full  reliance  on  Divine  grace  which  is  ever  freely 
bestowed  on  all  who  earnestly  strive  to  do  good  and 
avoid  evil.  Confidence  in  God  and  diffidence  in  self 
enable  the  humble,  no  matter  what  form  passion  may 
assume,  ever  to  say  with  St.  Paul,  ''I  can  do  all  things 
in  Him  who  strengtheneth  me."  Had  Luther  remem- 
bered this  teaching  of  the  Church  ana  been  obedient  to 
the  directions  of  his  spiritual  guides,  he  would  not  have 
been  carried  away  by  his  own  whims  and  fancies  to  the 
loss  of  his  peace  of  mind  and  to  distress  and  anguish 
of  soul. 

In  this  state  of  inward  depression,  which  often  pros- 
trated him  with  terror,  he  had  the  pity  and  kindly 
consideration  of  his  friends.  To  console  and  afford 
him  relief  some  of  them  recommended  him  to  direct 
his  attention  in  future  more  than  he  had  in  the  past  to 
greater  confidence  and  reliance  on  God's  mercy  which 
is  infinite  and  ever  ready  to  relieve  sinners  through 
the  merits  acquired  by  the  death  of  Christ.  The  sug- 
gestion, which  was  not  novel  or  unknown  to  him,  in- 
spired him  for  a  time  with  new  hope.  It  let  a  beam  of 
sunlight  into  the  darkness  of  his  terror.  This,  how- 
ever, was  soon  dispelled,  for  a  reaction  set  in  when 
he  began  to  ponder  over  and  put  his  own  sense  on  the 
words  of  St.  Paul;  "The  just  man  lives  by  faith."  By 
a  process  of  reasoning  peculiar  to  himself  he  construed 
the  word  "faith"  to  mean  an  assurance  of  personal 
salvation  and  "justification"  to  mean,  not  an  infusion 
of  justice  into  the  heart  of  the  person  justified,  but  a 
mere  external  imputation  of  it.  Having  managed  to 
connect  in  his  own  mind,  and  afterwards  in  the  minds 
of  others,  the  word  ''faith"  with  this  unnatural  mean- 
ing, he  could  appeal  to  all  the  passages  in  St.  Paul's 
Epistles  which  assert  that  justification  is  by  faith  and 
claim  them  as  so  many  proofs  of  his  newly  discovered 
doctrine.  He  thinks  now  that  self-pacification  is  se- 
cured and  that  henceforward  he  can  dispense  with  all 
and  every  other  virtue  enjoined  in  Scripture  and  work 
out  his  salvation  through  "faith  alone  without  works." 
How  he  came  to  hold  this  unwarranted  position,  he 


104  The  Facts  About  Luther 

tells  in  the  following  words:  "In  such  thoughts,"  re- 
ferring to  his  ill-will  and  anger  against  God,  "I  passed 
day  and  night  till  by  God's  grace,  I  remarked  how  the 
words  hung  together:  to  wit,  'The  justice  of  God  is 
revealed  in  the  Gospel,'  as  it  is  written.  The  just  man 
lives  by  his  faith.'     Thence  have  I  learned  to  know 
this  same  justice  of  God,  in  which  the  just  man,  through 
God's  grace  and  gift,  lives  by  faith  alone  ...  I  forth- 
with felt  I  was  entirely  born  anew  and  that  I  found 
a  wide  and  unbarred  door  by  which  to  enter  Paradise." 
In  this  declaration  of  false  security,  we  have  the 
beginning  of  Luther's  new  gospel,  which,  needless  to 
say,  is  directly  and  openly  opposed  to  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ.    As  a  theologian,  he  should  have  reahzed 
that  his  notion  of  the  absolute  assurance  of  salvation 
imparted  by  Faith  was  as  false  as  it  was  unsound,  and 
as  a  professor  of  Scripture,  he  should  have  known  that 
faith  alone  is  barren  and  lifeless  apart  from  the  meri- 
torious works  which  are  necessarily  connected  with  and 
founded  on  it.     To  hold  and  declare  that  men  are 
justified  by  faith  to  the  entire  exclusion  of  other  Divine 
virtues  is  nothing  less  than  a  perversion  of  the  Bible, 
a  falsification  of  the  Word  of  God,  and  an  injury  to 
souls  called  to  work  out  their  salvation  along  the  lines 
plainly  designated  by  Jesus  Christ.    But  Luther's  self- 
esteem  and  self-conceit  blinded  him  to  the  truth  he 
once  held  in  honor,  and,  instead  of  repelling  and  mas- 
tering his  singular  conception  of  salvation,  as  he  was  in 
duty  bound  to  do,  he  held  to  it  with  unbending  tenacity, 
developing  it  more  and  more  until  he  finally  declares 
in  Cap.  2,  ad.  Gal.  that  'Taith  alone  is  necessary  for 
justification :  all  other  things  are  completely  optional 
being  no  longer  either  commanded  or  forbidden."     It 
is  this  doctrine  which  he  afterwards  called  the  Articu- 
lus  stantis  vel  cadentis  Ecclesiae;  and  if  we  cannot  quite 
accept  this  description  of  it,  at  least  we  can  recognize 
that  it  is  the  corner-stone  of  the  Lutheran  and  Calvin- 
istic  systems. 

In  Luther's  new  program  of  salvation  the  living, 
vital,  efficacious  faith  that  manifests  itself   in  good 


Luther  and  Justification  105 

works,  and,  without  which,  it  is  impossible  to  please 
God,  must  no  longer  prevail  in  the  minds  of  men.    All 
the  old  teachings,  practises  and  observances  of  piety,  so 
useful  and  helpful  for  man's  justification  and  his  de- 
liverance from  Divine  vengeance,  must  now  be  forgot- 
ten and  abandoned.     The  priesthood,  sacraments,  in- 
dulgences, intercessory  prayer,  fasts,  pilgrimages,  all 
spiritual  works  must  be  displaced  to  make  way  for  his 
miserable,  degrading,  and  colorless  invention  of  faith 
without  works.    In  his  special  system  he  wanted  none 
of  the  old  means  for  gaining  eternal  life.    They  were 
considered  antiquated,  unavailing  and  worthless.     In 
his  estimation  it  was  not  possible  for  man  to  perform 
any  works  which  were  really  good  and  acceptable  to 
God.    Man  was  so  depraved  in  consequence  of  the  fall 
of  Adam  and  Eve  that  he  became  totally  corrupt,  both 
in  his  intellect  and  his  will,  and  was  consequently  in- 
capable till  regenerated  of  thinking,  willing  or  doing 
any  good  thing.    All  his  actions,  therefore,  even  those 
which  were  most  strictly  accordant  with  the  precepts 
of  the  natural  and  Divine  law,  were  "evil  and  only  evil 
and  that  continually."  "Corruption  hung  over  man  for- 
ever and  tainted  everything  he  did.    All  the  works  of 
man  before  justification  were  damnable  sins ;  and  all 
the  works  of  man  after  justification  were  so  sinful  in 
the  sight  of  God  that,  if  He  were  to  judge  them  strictly, 
every  one  would  be  damned."    In  commenting  on  one 
of  the  Psalms,  he  makes  this  horrible  statement :  "Con- 
ceived in  sorrow  and  corruption,  the  child  sins  even  in 
his  mother's  womb,  when,  as  yet,  a  mere  fetus,  an 
impure  mass  of  matter,  before  it  becomes  a  human 
creature,  it  commits  iniquity  and  incurs  damnation.    As 
he  grows  the  innate  element  of  corruption  develops. 
Man  has  said  to  sin,  'Thou  art  my  father,'  and  every 
act  he  performs  is  an  ofifense  against  God ;  and  to  the 
worms,   'You  are   my  brothers,'  and  he  crawls  like 
them  in  mire  and  corruption.     He  is  a  bad  tree  and 
cannot  produce  good  fruit ;  a  dung-hill  and  can  only 
exhale  foul  odors.    He  is  so  thoroughly  corrupted  that 
it  is  absolutely  impossible  for  him  to  produce  good 


106  The  Facts  About  Luther 

actions.  Sin  is  his  nature ;  he  cannot  help  committing 
it.  Man  may  do  his  best  to  be  good,  still  his  every 
action  is  unavoidably  bad;  he  commits  a  sin  as  often 
as  he  draws  his  breath."  (Consult  Wittenb.  III.  518.) 
These  were  favorite  sayings  of  Luther,  and  thus,  if  we 
are  to  believe  him,  every  action  of  an  unregenerate 
person,  however  just,  generous  or  noble,  is  utterly 
perverse  and  corrupt.  On  the  other  hand,  he  main- 
tained, "no  action  that  was  bad  would  bring  the  regener- 
ate man  under  condemnation,  because  he  was  justified 
by  faith ;  nor  were  his  good  actions,  in  even  the  slight- 
est degree,  meritorious,  because  they  were  done  entirely 
through  the  grace  given  him  by  the  Holy  Ghost."  He 
further  states  that  "the  nature  of  man  is  so  corrupted 
that  it  can  never  be  regenerated  and  sin  will  remain 
in  the  soul,  even  of  the  just,  forever.  God's  all  powerful 
grace  does  not  cleanse  from  sin.  The  Almighty  does 
not  regard  the  sins  of  men.  He  covers  them  over  with 
the  merits  of  Christ  and  does  not  impute  them  to  the 
sinner  whose  faith  in  the  sufferings  of  the  Redeemer 
is  made  manifest."  This  is  the  effect  of  faith,  which, 
he  says,  "tends  to  prevent  ©ur  filth  from  stinking  before 
God."  (Walch  XHL  1480.) 

Over  and  over  again  Luther  asserted  that  man  could 
not  be  just,  but,  in  his  desire  of  novelty,  he  thought 
there  must  be  some  way  never  known  before  whereby 
man  could  be  made  just,  and  so  after  a  display  of 
loose  thinking,  his  wonderful  ingenuity  for  mischief 
invented  the  theory  of  justification  by  the  imputation 
of  the  righteousness  of  Christ  and  not  as  heretofore  by 
the  communication  of  His  justice.  "Christ,"  he  says, 
"has  suffered  for  our  sins  and  has  fulfilled  the  law 
for  us.  We  have  only  to  believe  in  Him  and  by  be- 
lieving in  Him,  take  hold,  as  it  were,  of  His  merits  and 
put  them  on  like  a  cloak.  If  we  do  that,  although  im- 
perfect and  unholy,  we  shall  be  saved  and  considered 
just,  not  for  anything  that  God  made  us,  not  for  re- 
generation, or  transformation,  or  sanctification  but  for 
the  righteousness  of  Christ,  who  in  Himself  was  in- 
finitely holy.    All  that  man  has  to  do  is  to  remain  pasr 


Luther  and  Justification  107 

sive;  he  must  not  attempt  to  do  anything  himself  for 
his  salvation.  This  would  be  presumption."  He  must 
remain  with  regard  to  all  things,  which  pertain  to  the 
salvation  of  the  soul,  as  he  states  in  his  comment  on 
Genesis  xix,  26,  "like  the  statue  of  salt  into  which  the 
wife  of  Lot  was  changed ;  to  the  trunk  of  a  tree  or  a 
stone,  like  a  statue,  lifeless  and  having  no  use  of  either 
eyes,  mouth  or  other  senses  or  of  a  heart."  "To  be  a 
Christian  means  to  have  the  Evangelium  and  to  believe 
in  Christ.  This  faith  brings  forgiveness  of  sins  and 
Divine  grace ;  it  comes  solely  through  the  Holy  Ghost, 
who  works  it  through  the  word  without  any  co-opera- 
tion on  our  part.  .  .  .  Man  remains  passive  and  is 
acted  upon  by  the  Holy  Ghost  just  as  clay  is  shaped  by 
the  potter."  (Tischr.  H.  C.  15.  §  i.) 

This  view  of  justification  was  forthwith  made 
the  fundamental  dogma  of  the  new  religion  Luther 
formulated  for  the  world's  acceptance.  From  the  time 
this  false  doctrine  was  first  announced,  his  followers 
in  heresy  have  been  taught  to  beheve  that  men  are 
saved  by  faith  alone  and  that  good  works  are  alto- 
gether unnecessary.  "The  Gospel,"  Luther  falsely 
declares,  "teaches  nothing  of  the  merits  of  works ;  he 
that  says  the  Gospel  requires  works  for  salvation,  I 
say,  flat  and  plain,  is  a  liar."  (Table  Talk,  p.  137, 
Hazlitt.)  If  men  beheve  in  Christ,  they  are  told,  and 
accept  Him  as  their  personal  Saviour,  His  justice  will 
be  imputed  to  them  and  they  will  go  straight  to  Heaven. 
It  does  not  matter  what  evil  they  have  done  during  their 
Hves ;  it  does  not  matter  whether  or  not  they  repent 
of  their  sins ;  it  does  not  matter  whether  or  not,  at 
the  moment  of  death,  they  have  compunction,  contrition 
or  attrition,  or,  are  in  a  state  of  grace,  if  they  have 
faith  they  will  be  saved. 

Luther  was  the  first  in  Christendom  to  proclaim  to 
the  world  that  man  was  "justified  by  faith  alone."  The 
doctrine  was  novel  and  admirably  suited  to  lull  and 
tranquiHze  the  misgivings  of  conscience.  Although  it 
opened  the  way  to  carelessness  of  behavior,  as  events 
proved,  yet  he  felt  sure  of  the  correctness  of  his  teach- 


108  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ing  and  wanted  no  discussion  thereon.  Any  one  who 
would  dare  contradict  him  on  the  point  and  declare 
the  Gospel  required  works  for  salvation  was  to  be 
branded  as  a  "liar."  This  appellation  is  not  a  pleasant 
one,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  its  author  deserved  it 
better  than  he  knew,  for  his  singular  teaching  was  as 
false  as  it  was  pernicious,  and  being  without  warrant 
in  the  divine  plan  of  salvation,  it  was  utterly  powerless 
to  lead  souls  to  everlasting  Hfe. 

If  this  teaching  of  Luther's  were  true,  it  is  apparent 
that  Christ,  instead  of  declaring  that  the  first  and  great 
commandment  was  love,  should  have  said  that  it  was 
faith.  But  the  Master  did  not  believe  that  we  were 
saved  by  faith  alone,  because  when  the  rich  young  man 
went  to  Him  and  asked  what  he  must  do  to  gain  Heaven 
our  Lord  answered:  *'If  thou  wilt  enter  into  life,  keep 
the  Commandments."  He  did  not  say,  "Believe  in 
me.  Accept  me  for  your  personal  Saviour.  Have  faith 
in  me."  No,  but  He  did  say:  "If  thou  wilt  enter  into 
life,  keep  the  Commandments."  It  is  evident  from  this 
solemn  declaration  of  Christ  that  He  required  in  His 
followers  the  faith  that  manifests  itself  in  such  volun- 
tary works  and  actions  as  are  pleasing  to  Him  and  are 
performed  out  of  Love  for  Him.  That  living  faith, 
which  the  Master  enjoins,  is  inseparable  from  charity 
or  the  love  of  God,  and  charity  is  not  real  unless  it 
induces  us  to  keep  the  Commandments  and  conform 
our  lives  not  to  some  special  injunction  or  virtue,  but 
to  all  the  requirements  and  truths  of  Divine  revelation. 
This  is  the  teaching  which  Christ  constantly  insisted 
upon,  and  this,  and  no  other,  was  and  is  still  the  teach- 
ing which  He  communicated  to  His  Church  for  the 
enlightenment  and  sanctification  of  the  world  until  the 
end  of  time. 

When  Luther  advanced  his  fanciful  and  mischiev- 
ous conception  of  justification  the  Church,  true  to  her 
mission  of  safeguarding  the  truths  of  her  Divine 
Founder,  had  no  difficulty  in  showing  that  fiduciary 
faith — a  confidence  or  hope  founded  only  on  the  merits 
of  Jesus  Christ — was  an  absolutely  new  invention  and 


Luther  and  j  ustification  109 

was  not  only  worthless,  but  powerless  to  justify  men. 
In  her  Council  of  Trent  ( 1545-1563)  she  condemned,  as 
was  her  right,  the  new-fangled  teaching  of  Luther  and 
warned  her  subjects  against  its  entanglements  and  dan- 
gers. Then  she  proclaimed  anew  for  the  enlightenment 
of  all  the  heavenly  teaching  committed  to  her  keeping 
from  the  beginning  and  insisted  that  whilst  faith  is 
necessary  to  dispose  the  sinner  to  receive  grace,  it 
alone  is  not  sufficient  for  justification.  A  living  faith 
that  embraces  righteousness  is  what  is  required,  and 
this  manifests  itself  in  acts  of  hope,  of  love,  of  sorrow 
and  a  purpose  of  amendment  of  Hfe.  It  is  only  then 
that  God  finding  the  sinner  disposed  to  believe  all  re- 
vealed truths,  observe  all  the  Commandments  and  re- 
ceive the  Sacraments  He  instituted,  gives  him  gratui- 
tously His  grace  or  intrinsic  justice  which  remits  to 
him  his  sins  and  sanctifies  him. 

Faith  alone  has  not  the  power  of  saving  man  for 
two  reasons:  first,  that  infants  are  capable  of  justifi- 
cation, which  we  suppose  no  one  will  deny,  but  are  not 
capable  of  an  act  of  faith;  second,  that  faith  is  a  tem- 
porary virtue  ceasing  in  the  beatified  state,  whereas 
the  principle  of  justification  is  permanent  and  eternal. 

In  the  process  of  justification,  the  first  and  foremost 
important  place  is  taken  by  faith.  More,  however,  is 
required  for  its  development,  completion  and  perfec- 
tion. It  should  be  remembered  that  when  God  created 
man.  He  placed  him  in  a  state  of  probation.  He 
constituted  him  a  rational  being  and  imposed  certain 
precepts  which  he  was  free  to  keep  or  violate  as  he 
may  choose  unto  eternal  happiness  or  eternal  misery. 
Although  God  required  the  particular  exercise  of  love 
which  consists  in  a  voluntary  obedience  to  His  precepts, 
yet  He  cannot  dispense  with  love  itself,  which  is  the 
great  and  necessary  requisite  to  a  state  of  perfect  jus- 
tification. The  attributes  of  God  require  Him  to  carry 
out  the  terms  of  probation  to  which  He  has  subjected 
man.  The  acts  which  proceed  from  the  principle 
of  love,  in  order  to  bring  the  soul  to  God  as  its  ultimate 
term,  must,  therefore,  cover  not  a  part,  but  the  whole 


110  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ground  of  the  Divine  law  and  include  not  one  but  all 
the  Commandments. 

Love  then  is  the  dominating  principle  in  the  union 
of  the  soul  with  God  and  the  fashioning  of  it  for  an 
eternity  of  reward. 

Faith  alone,  whether  fiduciary  or  dogmatic,  cannot 
then  justify  man.  Since  our  Divine  adoption  and 
friendship  with  God  is  based  on  charity  or  perfect  love 
of  God,  dead  faith,  faith  devoid  of  charity,  cannot 
possess  any  justifying  power.  Only  such  faith  as  is 
active  in  charity  and  good  works  can  justify  man  and 
this  even  before  the  actual  reception  of  Baptism  or 
Penance,  although  not  without  the  desire  of  the  sacra- 
ment. The  essence  of  active  justification  comprises 
not  only  forgiveness  of  sins,  but  also  ''Sanctification 
and  renovation  of  the  interior  man  by  means  of  the 
voluntary  acceptation  of  sanctifying  grace  and  other 
supernatural  gifts." 

Thus,  we  are  justified  by  God's  justice,  not  that  jus- 
tice whereby  He  Himself  is  just,  but  that  justice 
whereby  He  makes  us  just,  in  so  far  as  He  bestows 
upon  us  the  gift  of  His  grace  which  renovates  the 
soul  interiorly  and  adheres  to  it  as  the  soul's  own  holi- 
ness. 

''Love,"  as  Mohler  says,  "must  already  vivify  faith 
before  the  Catholic  Church  will  say  that  through  it  man 
is  truly  pleasing  to  God.  Faith  in  love  and  love  in 
faith  justify;  they  form  here  an  indispensable  unity. 
This  justifying  faith  is  not  merely  negative,  but  posi- 
tive with  all ;  not  merely  a  confidence,  that  for  Christ's 
sake  forgiveness  of  sins  will  be  obtained,  but  a  sancti- 
fied feeling,  in  itself  agreeable  to  God.  Charity  is  un- 
doubtedly, according  to  Catholic  doctrine,  a  fruit  of 
faith.  But  Faith  justifies  only  when  it  has  already 
brought  forth  this  fruit." 

This  teaching  of  the  Church  on  Justification  was 
most  distasteful  to  Luther  and,  as  might  be  expected 
from  a  man  of  his  rebellious  nature,  he  opposed  it  with 
all  the  force  at  his  command.  In  the  Altenburg  edition 
of  his  works  we  have  a  sample  of  his  characteristic 


Luther  and  Justification  111 

raving  on  the  point  at  issue.  'The  Papists,"  he  says, 
''contend  that  faith  which  is  informed  by  charity,  justi- 
fies. On  this  point  we  must  contend  and  oppose  with 
all  our  strength ;  here  we  must  yield  not  a  nail's  breadth 
to  any ;  neither  to  the  angels  of  Heaven,  nor  to  the  gates 
of  Hell,  nor  to  St.  Paul,  nor  to  an  hundred  Emperors, 
nor  to  a  thousand  Popes,  nor  to  the  whole  world ;  and 
'this  be  my  watchword  and  sign' :  'tessera  et  sym- 
boliim/  "  The  consummate  boldness  of  this  call  to  incite 
rebellion  against  the  express  teaching  of  God  regarding 
the  salvation  of  man  is  most  astonishing  and  scan- 
dalous. 

In  all  the  bitterness  of  his  antagonism  and  opposition, 
he,  after  all,  was  something  of  a  reasoner  when  he  had 
an  object  to  attain  and  when  he  wanted  to  make  things 
square  with  his  strange  and  novel  views.  He  knew 
as  well  as  any  man  of  his  day  that  the  Church,  to 
which  he  belonged  from  his  youth  to  his  excommuni- 
cation, demanded  from  time  immemorial  faith  and 
good  works  as  essential  requisites  in  the  lives  of  all  who 
were  anxious  to  attain  salvation.  This  time-honored 
doctrine,  however,  stood  in  the  way  and  was  in  opposi- 
tion to  his  heretofore  unheard  of  system  of  salvation, 
and,  as  it  could  not  be  made  to  agree  with  his  fanciful 
and  eccentric  speculations,  he  labored  in  season  and 
out  of  season  to  dethrone  the  Church's  teaching  in  the 
minds  and  in  the  hearts  of  the  faithful.  In  the  execu- 
tion of  his  mischievous  work,  he  began  to  laugh  and 
jeer  at  the  idea  of  good  works  as  necessary  for  justifi- 
cation. He  denounced  in  unmeasured  terms  the  works 
of  supererogation  or  the  counsels  of  perfection,  and 
the  vows  by  which  priests,  monks,  and  nuns  conse- 
crated themselves  to  the  service  of  God.  In  his  esti- 
mation, it  was  an  idle  thing,  fondly  invented,  that  man 
or  woman  should  separate  himself  or  herself  from 
the  world  and  be  consecrated  unreservedly  to  the 
service  of  the  living  God.  And  all  following  our  Lord 
in  the  way  of  self-abnegation,  in  the  way  of  self-denial, 
in  the  way  of  the  crucifixion  of  self  and  of  the  flesh 
with  all  its  unholy  desires,  he  completely  and  totally 


112  The  Facts  About  Luther 

denied,  and  not  only  denied  but  even  derided.  The 
needlessness  of  all  these  and  other  consecrated 
means  of  attaining  perfection  hitherto  in  use,  pro- 
claimed by  Luther,  proved  a  new  charter  of  lib- 
erty from  bondage  of  every  kind  for  himself, 
and  in  the  end  for  multitudes  of  others.  The  ex- 
perience of  later  years  record  the  sad  fact  that  the 
so-called  message  of  emancipation  left  men,  not  better, 
but  worse  than  it  found  them.  The  soothing  but  disas- 
trous doctrine  of  faith  without  works  could  only  lead 
to  carelessness  of  life  and  open  up  the  way  to  every 
species  of  unbridled  lewdness  and  immorality.  It  did 
not  bring;  as  was  fondly  contemplated,  the  peace  and 
confidence  and  spiritual  freedom  expected.  The  very 
contrary  results  were  everywhere  noticeable,  for  all, 
from  Luther  down  to  the  last  of  his  misguided  fol- 
lowers who  denied  the  necessity  of  supernatural  helps 
and  earnest  striving  in  the  ways  of  perfection,  were 
universally  notable  for  such  indecencies  and  horrible 
violations  of  God's  law  as  shock  and  scandalize  every 
impartial  reader  of  the  history  of  the  Reformation 
period. 

The  denial  of  the  necessity  of  good  works  for  justifi- 
cation was,  however,  only  a  part  of  Luther's  plan  for 
the  ruin  and  deception  of  the  unwary.  In  order  to 
give  color  to  his  "new  experience  of  salvation,"  as 
Leimbech  calls  it,  he  maintained  in  his  Commentary  on 
the  Epistle  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Galatians  that  "there  is 
an  irreconcilable  opposition  existing  between  the  Law 
and  the  Gospel."  "The  Law  and  the  Gospel,"  he  says, 
"are  two  contrary  things  which  cannot  be  in  harmony 
with  each  other,"  and,  "no  man  on  earth  can  properly 
distinguish  between  the  Law  and  the  Gospel."  To 
lend  weight  to  this  bold  and  untenable  claim,  nothing 
daunted,  he  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  "even  the  man 
Jesus  Christ,  when  in  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  suf- 
fered from  such  ignorance."  (Tischr.  I.  C.  12.  §  19.) 
The  imputation  implied  in  this  utterance  is  shocking, 
but  we  must  pass  it  over  for  the  moment.  We  feel, 
however,  that  Luther's  ignorance  was  more  feigned 


Luther  AND  Justification  113 

than  real  because  his  earher  theological  studies  dealt 
exhaustively  with  the  question  of  the  Law  and  the 
Gospel,  their  nature,  order  and  position  in  the  Divine 
scheme  of  salvation.  If  he  declared,  as  he  did  later, 
that  he  could  not  sufficiently  realize  the  question,  he 
should  not,  however,  have  brazenly  stated  that  "no 
man  on  earth  understood  it,"  for  he  confessed  that  his 
own  pupils  boasted  they  comprehended  the  doctrine 
thoroughly  and  had  it  "at  their  fingers'  ends."  He 
knew,  too,  that  besides  his  own  pupils  there  were  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  the  faithful  in  his  day  who 
realized  that  there  was  no  contradiction  between  the 
Law  and  the  Gospel  and  that  the  New  or  Evangelical 
Law  was  no  other  than  the  old  moral  law  renewed, 
approved  and  perfected  by  Jesus  Christ  according  to 
His  own  declaration :  ''Do  not  think  that  I  am  come  to 
destroy  the  law  or  the  prophets.  I  am  not  come  to  de- 
stroy, but  to  fulfill." 

Luther,  however,  cared  little  about  misrepresenting 
the  belief  of  the  neighbor  when  he  wanted  to  gain  a 
hearing  for  his  own  false  conceptions.  His  viewpoint 
was  in  the  circumstances  paramount  to  all  else  and  to 
advance  it,  he  used  all  his  energies  regardless  of  con- 
sequences. In  his  scheme  for  the  destruction  of  every- 
thing hitherto  held  as  holy  and  sacred,  it  hardly  suited 
him  to  acknowledge  the  harmony  which  existed  be- 
tween the  Law  and  the  Gospel,  for  he  was  gradually 
preparing  the  way  for  the  violation,  destruction  and 
abandonment  of  the  Decalogue.  Having  fallen  away 
from  his  original  fervor  and  having  become  a  breaker 
and  not  an  observer  of  the  Commandments,  he  wanted 
to  strike  a  blow  at  the  source  of  all  morality,  and  re- 
move, if  possible,  the  very  foundation  of  all  moral 
obligation.  Despite  all  the  teaching  of  Christ  to  the 
effect  that  the  Law  was  for  all  men,  for  all  time,  and 
for  all  circumstances,  he  imagined  that  a  declaration  of 
freedom  from  the  bondage  thereof  would  make  his 
position  more  tenable  and  his  teaching  more  savory 
and  acceptable  to  the  crowd  he  desired  to  win  to  his 
cause. 


114  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Luther,  of  course,  wanted  the  Law  announced.  He 
preached  and  taught  it ;  he  inserted  it  in  his  catechism 
and  he  exhorted  his  followers  to  recite  it  daily.  Never- 
theless, he,  at  the  same  time,  warned  against  allowing 
the  Law  to  have  any  influence  on  the  conscience,  for 
then  it  would  become,  as  he  said,  "a  sink  of  heresies 
and  blasphemies."  (Wittenb.  V.  2^2  b.)  He  consid- 
ered the  advocacy  of  the  Law  merely  useful  "to  show 
to  man  that  he  is  a  sinner,  to  terrify  him  in  that  way 
and  make  him  throw  himself  upon  Christ."  (De 
Wette,  HI,  307.)  To  crush  the  "horrible  monster  and 
stiffnecked  brute"  of  pride  in  man  who  is  ever  in- 
clined to  think  much  of  himself  and  of  his  works, 
"God  wants,"  he  says,  "a  great  and  strong  hammer, 
that  is,  the  Law,  for  it  reveals  to  man  his  absolute 
inability  to  keep  it.  The  laws  have  been  given  only, 
that  man  should  see  in  them  the  impossibility  of  doing 
good  and  that  he  should  learn  to  despair  of  himself. 
...  As  soon  as  man  begins  to  learn  and  to  feel,  from 
the  laws  of  God  his  own  incapacity  ...  he  becomes 
thoroughly  humbled  and  annihilated  in  his  own  eyes." 
(Walch,  XIX,  1212.) 

Although  Luther  advocated  the  Law  and  wished 
it  known  by  all,  he,  at  the  same  time,  declared  that 
"the  moral  duties  it  enjoined  were  impossible  of  fulfill- 
ment and  incited  not  love,  but  hatred  of  God."  "Lex 
summum  odium  Dei  affert."  In  this  favorite  declara- 
tion he  gives  a  new  proof  of  the  contradictory  charac- 
ter of  his  mind  and  advances  a  teaching  which  is  di- 
rectly opposed  to  that  of  faith  and  experience.  To 
claim  that  the  fulfillment  of  the  Law  is  impossible  is  as 
imnious  as  it  is  blasphemous,  inasmuch  as  it  imputes 
to  God  the  injustice  of  commanding  us  to  do  something 
above  our  strength.  How  could  God,  who  is  infinitely 
wise  and  good,  command  His  creatures  to  do  anything 
impossible  to  them?  If  the  accomplishment  of  the 
Law  seems  to  be  above  the  powers  of  nature,  do  we 
not  know,  and  have  we  not  been  assured  that  God  is 
careful  to  offer  all  His  Divine  helps  to  enable  the  will 
of  man  not  only  to  fulfill  all  the  duties  imposed  by  the 


Luther  AND  Justification  115 

Law,  but  also  to  make  him  experience  pleasure  and 
happiness  in  their  observance?  Does  not  the  Holy 
Ghost  declare  by  the  mouth  of  the  Psalmist,  "Blessed 
is  the  man  that  feareth  the  Lord.  He  shall  delight 
exceedingly  in  His  Commandments"?  The  example  of 
the  Saints  of  all  ages,  conditions  and  climes  furnish 
unanswerable  proof  of  this  truth.  God's  grace  is 
ever  ready  to  help  men  of  good  will.  He  will  no 
more  fail  us  than  He  failed  the  saints.  The  same  faith, 
the  same  hope,  the  same  love,  the  same  sacraments,  the 
same  Gospel  they  had  will  assuredly  help  us,  as  they 
helped  them,  to  subdue  passion  and  attain  to  holiness 
of  behavior.  With  all  the  Divine  helps  God  has 
placed  at  man's  disposal,  is  it  not  easier  to  fulfill  the 
Law  than  to  break  it?  Besides,  is  it  not  more  honor- 
able to  obey  God  than  passion?  Is  it  not  sweeter  to 
have  the  soul  filled  with  peace  by  repressing  passion 
than  gnawed  with  remorse  through  the  gratification  of 
irregular  inclinations  ? 

The  impiety  and  blasphemy  of  Luther  is  all  the  more 
remarkable  when  after  stating  the  impossibility  of  ful- 
filling the  Law,  he  unblushingly  declares  that  "the  Law 
incites  not  love  but  hatred  of  God."  Every  reader  of 
the  Scripture  knows  how  false  and  unfounded  this 
statement  is.  The  Law  of  God  is  the  law  of  love.  It 
can  never  inspire  hatred  in  the  mind  or  heart  of  men 
of  good  will  towards  its  Framer.  Christ's  words  prove 
this  to  a  certainty.  He  says:  "If  any  one  love  Me,  he 
will  keep  My  word  and  My  Father  will  love  him,  and 
we  will  come  to  him  and  will  make  our  abode  with 
him."  St.  Paul  expresses  the  same  teaching  when  he 
says  that  the  "fulfilling  of  the  law  is  love."  St.  John 
also  confirms  this  truth  in  the  memorable  words: 
"We  have  known  and  have  believed  the  charity  which 
God  hath  to  us.  God  is  charity,  and  he  that  abideth  in 
charity,  abideth  in  God  and  God  in  him."  Thus  faith 
and  experience  unite  in  proclaiming  that  not  only  is 
the  observance  of  the  Commandments  possible,  but 
their  fulfillment  incites  not  hatred  but  love  of  God. 

Luther  at  one  time  knew  all  this,  but  later  on  his 


116  The  Facts  About  Luther 

anxiety  to  place  opposition  between  the  Law  and  the 
Gospel,  and  to  deiine  the  place  the  Law  occupies  in  the 
religion  of  Christ  and  the  purpose  for  which  it  exists, 
warped  his  judgment  and  blinded  his  intellect  regarding 
the  true  state  of  the  question.  All  his  efforts  to  explain 
the  necessity  of  the  Decalogue,  inasinuch  as  he  admits 
it  at  all,  are  not  too  clear,  and  the  line  he  draws  be- 
tween the  Law  and  the  Gospel  is  not  only  unsatisfac- 
tory, but  most  disappointing.  Here  are  his  own  words. 
"The  Law,"  he  says,  "points  out  what  man  has  to  do, 
v/hereas  the  Gospel  unfolds  the  gifts  God  is  willing 
to  confer  on  man.  The  former  we  cannot  observe, 
the  latter  we  receive  and  apprehend  by  faith."  (Tischr. 
L  C.  12  §  7.)  "The  Gospel,"  he  would  have  us  believe, 
"does  not  announce  what  we  must  do  or  omit  .  .  . 
but  bids  us  open  our  hands  to  receive  gifts,  and  says, 
Behold,  dear  man,  this  is  what  God  has  done  for  you : 
for  your  sake  He  made  His  Son  assume  human  nature. 
This  believe  and  accept,  and  you  shall  be  saved.  The 
Gospel  only  shows  us  the  gifts  of  God,  not  what  we 
have  to  give  to  God  or  to  do  for  Him  as  is  the  wont 
of  the  Law."    (Walch,  HI,  4.) 

Luther  was  right  in  saying  that  the  Gospel  unfolds 
the  gifts  of  God  to  mankind,  but  he  erred  grievously 
in  declaring  that  it  did  not  announce  "what  we  must  do 
or  omit."  Every  reader  of  the  Gospel  knows  that 
Christ,  who  was  sent  by  His  Father  to  instruct  and 
guide  us  to  perfection,  not  only  promulgated  the  law 
anew,  but  ever  and  always  insisted  on  its  observance. 
When  the  young  man  asked  Christ  the  question,  "What 
shall  I  do  to  be  saved?"  He  clearly  answered:  "If  thou 
wilt  enter  into  life  keep  the  Commandments."  Now, 
the  Decalogue,  which  is  the  application  of  the  great 
precept  of  the  love  of  God  and  one's  neighbor,  enjoins 
two  kinds  of  precepts :  some  positive,  commanding  cer- 
tain thinsfs  to  be  done ;  others  negative,  forbidding 
certain  things  to  be  done;  all  having  for  their  end  to 
teach  us  the  acts  bv  which  we  should  exercise  our  char- 
ity and  protect  this  virtue  from  injury  and  even  de- 
struction.   The  law  of  God  is  the  law  oi  charity,  and 


Luther  and  Justification  117 

chanty  is  active  in  doing  good  and  avoiding  evil.  It 
manifests  itself  not  merely  by  words,  but  by  works ; 
the  works  prescribed  in  the  Commandments.  To  pro- 
duce the  works  of  charity  is  a  duty  not  to  be  shirked. 
It  binds  at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances  if  we 
would  secure  happiness  in  this  world  and  in  the  next. 
Moreover,  the  observance  of  the  Commandments  shows 
God  that  He  is  always  Our  Lord  and  Master  having 
the  power  and  the  right  to  rule  over  and  command  His 
servants  and  children.  It  is  from  this  point  of  view 
that  we  must  contemplate  the  Decalogue,  if  we  would 
understand  the  profound  meaning  of  the  Saviour's 
numerous  words  regarding  the  sweetness  of  the  Divine 
law.  To  select  one  out  of  many  we  find  Him  saying : 
"Take  up  My  yoke  upon  you  and  learn  of  Me,  because 
I  am  meek  and  humble  of  heart;  and  you  shall  find 
rest  to  your  souls.  For  My  yoke  is  sweet  and  My  bur- 
den light,"  which  is  the  same  as  to  say,  "My  yoke  is 
love,"  the  only  end  of  all  my  precepts  is  to  preserve 
love ;  preserve  it  ''and  you  shall  find  rest  to  your  souls/' 
It  is  in  Charity,  then,  that  all  the  Christian  religion 
consists.  It  is  that  which  distinguishes  the  true  Chris- 
tian ;  it  is  that  which  makes  him  really  a  child  of  God, 
a  member  of  the  mystical  body  of  Christ,  the  living 
temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  an  heir  and  citizen  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Without  charity  all  is  useless 
and  profits  nothing  to  salvation.  Neither  faith  nor 
miracles,  nor  the  most  exalted  gifts,  nor  the  most  gen- 
erous alms,  nor  even  martyrdom  in  the  midst  of  flames, 
can  profit  us  anything  toward  salvation  without  charity 
or  the  love  of  God.  "If  I  have  not  charity,"  St.  Paul 
says,  "I  am  nothing  and  it  profiteth  one  nothing." 

Luther  endeavored  with  all  his  power  to  draw  a 
distinction  between  Christ  and  His  promulgation  of  the 
law.  He  wanted  to  have  it  appear  that  the  Saviour  of 
men  should  be  recognized  for  His  quality  of  mercy 
and  not  for  His  justice.  The  thought  of  Christ  as  a 
judge  angered  by  sin  was  abhorrent  to  him.  All  his 
special  pleading  in  this  direction  could  not,  however, 
still  the  behests  of  conscience  which  ever  and  always 


118  The  Facts  About  Luther 

bears  witness  to  the  law  and  testifies  to  its  binding 
force.  The  precepts  of  the  Decalogue  are  so  fixedly 
impressed  on  the  heart  of  man  that  it  is  impossible 
to  violate  these  without  feehng  that  the  Almighty,  who 
is  set  at  defiance  by  the  sinner,  will  surely  avenge  all 
and  every  transgression  if  not  atoned  for.  Man,  Luther 
admitted,  bears  within  his  heart  this  voice,  which 
reproaches  him  with  a  badly  spent  life  and  which 
threatens  him  with  God's  judgment;  but,  he  calls  "this 
voice  the  voice  of  the  devil,"  ''who  tries  to  cheat  man," 
and  "who  comes  under  the  appearance  of  Christ  and 
transforms  himself  into  an  angel  of  light,"  "to  frighten 
us  with  the  Law."  (Wittenb.  V.  321,  321 B.  Cfr.  382.) 
This  fanciful  notion,  confounding  the  voice  of  con- 
science with  the  voice  of  man's  enemy,  brought  neither 
peace  nor  consolation  to  his  hearers.  The  better  in- 
formed realized,  in  spite  of  all  his  strange  advice,  that 
the  voice  of  conscience  still  asserted  itself  and  bore 
indubitable  witness  to  sin  and  the  fear  of  its  punish- 
ment. Conscience  can  never  be  dethroned  and  man 
cannot  help  realizing  the  presence  of  sin  and  being 
terrified  at  the  thought  of  hell  and  eternal  death. 
Luther  knew  all  this,  but  he  persisted  in  his  dogged  op- 
position until  we  find  him  in  the  agony  of  despair 
declaring  with  the  uttermost  boldness  that  "Man  must 
persuade  himself  that  he  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
law  and  that  no'sins  can  condemn  him ;  nay,  let  him,  so 
to  say,  boast  of  his  sinfulness  and  thus  take  the  weapon 
out  of  the  devil's  hand.  When  the  devil  rushes  at  you 
and  tries  to  drown  you  in  the  flood  and  the  deluge  of 
your  sins  .  .  .  say  to  him,  'Why  do  you  wish  to  make 
a  saint  of  me,  why  do  you  expect  to  find  justice  in  me, 
who  has  nothing  but  sins  and  most  grievous  ones  ?'  " 
(Wittenb.  V.  281  B.)  "In  fact,  what  would  be  the  use 
of  Christ,  if  the  law  and  our  transgressions  of  the  law 
could  still  annoy  and  terrify  us?"  Therefore,  he  says, 
"when  the  conscience  is  terror-stricken  on  account  of 
the  law  and  struggles  with  the  thought  of  God's  judg- 
ment, do  not  consult  reason  or  the  law  .  .  .  act  exactly 
as  if  you  had  never  heard  of  the  law  of  God."    (Wit- 


Luther  AND  Justification  liu 

tenb.  V.  303  B.)  "Answer:  There  is  a  time  to  live 
and  a  time  to  die ;  there  is  a  time  to  hear  the  law  and 
a  time  to  despise  the  law  .  .  .  Let  the  law  be  off 
and  let  the  Gospel  reign."  (Wittenb.  V.  304  B.)  *'The 
body  with  its  members,"  he  says,  "has  to  be  subject 
to  the  law,  it  has  to  carry  its  burden  like  a  donkey,  but 
leave  the  donkey  with  its  burden  in  the  valley  when 
you  ascend  the  mountain.  For  the  conscience  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  law,  works,  earthly  justice.  We  want 
indeed  'the  light  of  the  Evangelium'  to  understand 
this,  and  in  this  light  the  meaning  is :  'Keep  the  law,  by 
all  means ;  but  if  you  do  not,  you  need  not  be  troubled 
in  your  conscience,  for  the  transgression  of  the  law 
cannot  possibly  condemn  you.'  "     (Wittemb.  V.  304.) 

Some  of  Luther's  admirers  imagine  that  under  the 
Church's  teaching  the  people  did  not  understand  the 
Ten  Commandments  and  they  claim  forthwith  that 
their  hero  came  and  brought  back  the  true  conscious- 
ness of  them  and  that  whatever  he  said  about  them  is 
to  be  understood  as  an  antithesis  between  grace  and 
law  in  the  life  of  the  Christian.  If  this  be  so,  then  it  be- 
hooves his  admirers  to  tell  us  in  what  possible  connec- 
tion is  it  permissible  for  a  Christian  gentleman  to  say,  "if 
we  allow  them  (the  Ten  Commandments)  any  influence 
in  our  conscience,  they  become  the  cloak  of  all  evil, 
heresies,  and  blasphemies?"  Is  this  the  "antithesis 
between  grace  and  law?"  Does  not  Luther  make  it 
plain  enough  when  he  says,  "The  Catholic  theologians 
are  asses  who  do  not  know  what  they  maintain,  when 
they  say  that  Christ  has  only  abrogated  the  ceremonial 
law  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  not  also  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments?" (Epistle  to  the  Galatians.)  Is  the 
abrogation  of  the  Ten  Commandments  an  "antithesis?" 
"That  shall  serve  you  as  a  true  rule  that  wherever  the 
Scriptures  orders  and  commands  to  do  good  works, 
you  must  so  understand  it  that  the  Scriptures  forbid 
good  works."  (Wittenb.  ed.  2,  171.  6.)  "If  you 
should  not  sin  against  the  Gospel,  then  be  on  your 
guard  against  good  works ;  avoid  them  as  one  avoids 
a  pest."     (Jena.  ed.  i.  318  b.)     In  what  connection  is 


120  The  Facts  About  Luther 

it  compatible  with  a  Christian  character  to  counsel 
against  good  works  as  against  a  '"pest"  and  make  it  an 
"antithesis  to  grace?"  Or,  under  what  circumstances 
is  it  allowable  for  a  "man  of  God"  and  a  "Reformer" 
to  say  of  Moses,  God's  chosen  servant,  that  he  should 
be  looked  upon  "with  suspicion  as  the  worst  heretic, 
as  a  damned  and  excommunicated  person;  yea,  worse 
than  tne  Pope  and  the  Devil?"  (Jena.  4,  98.  6.)  "A 
pure  heart  enlightened  by  God  must  not  dirty,  soil  itself 
with  the  law.  Thus  let  the  Christian  understand  that 
it  matters  not  whether  he  keeps  it  or  not ;  yea,  he  may 
do  what  is  forbidden  and  leave  undone  what  is  com- 
manded, for  neither  is  a  sin."  (W.  XI.  447.)  Does 
this  indicate  a  very  reverential  spirit  toward  the  law 
of  God  and  was  this  intended  to  mean  that  the  law  was 
to  be  a  guide  for  the  hfe  of  regenerates?  Is  it  thus 
that  "Luther  came  and  brought  back  the  true  conscious- 
ness of  them  (the  Ten  Commandments)  to  the  peo- 
ple?" If  this  be  so,  then  the  "moral  lite  and  progress," 
his  friends  claim  for  his  doctrine,  has  its  root  in  the 
worst  days  of  paganism,  and  not  in  the  teachings  of 
Jesus  Christ  and  of  His  Church. 

As  might  be  expected  from  one  who  strove  to  mini- 
mize the  importance  and  intiuence  of  the  Law  in  the 
lives  of  men,  Luther  had  scant  respect  for  him  whom 
God  selected  to  proclaim  His  will  to  the  peoples  and 
the  nations  from  Sion's  Mount.  This  mouth-piece  of 
God  became  the  special  subject  of  his  untiring  and 
ceaseless  abuse  and  vituperation.  He  not  only  acknowl- 
edges his  opposition  to  Moses,  but  he  urges  it  with  all 
the  vehemence  he  is  master  of.  He  went  so  far  in  his 
antagonism  that  he  proclaimed  the  Law-giver  a  most 
dangerous  man  and  the  embodiment  of  everything  that 
can  torment  the  soul.  His  hatred  of  the  Prophet  was 
so  deep-rooted  that  on  one  occasion  he  cried  out :  "To 
the  gallows  with  Moses."  He  disliked  him  because  he 
thought  that  he  insisted  too  strongly  on  the  Law  and 
its  observance.  In  order  to  minimize  his  mission  and 
destroy  his  influence  he  boldly  and  untruthfully  as- 
serted that  Moses  "was  sent  to  the  Jewish  people  only 


Luther  and  Justification  121 

and  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  Gentiles  and 
Christians."  His  advice  to  all  who  bothered  themselves 
with  the  Law-giver  was  to  "chase  that  stammering  and 
stuttering  Moses,"  as  he  called  him,  "with  his  law  to 
the  Jews  and  not  allow  his  terrible  threats  to  intimidate 
them."  "Moses  must  ever  be  looked  upon,"  he  says, 
"with  suspicion,  even  as  upon  a  heretic,  excommuni- 
cated, damned,  worse  than  the  Pope  and  the  Devil." 
(Comment,  in  Gal.)  The  scurrilous  language  applied 
to  God's  messenger  reaches  its  depths  of  infamy  when 
he  says  further:  "I  will  not  have  Moses  with  his  law, 
for  he  is  the  enemy  of  the  Lord  Christ  ...  we  must 
put  away  thoughts  and  disputes  about  the  law,  when- 
ever the  conscience  becomes  terrified  and  feels  God's 
anger  against  sin.  Instead  of  that  it  will  be  better  to 
sing,  to  eat,  to  drink,  to  sleep,  to  be  merry  in  spite  of 
the  devil."  (Tischr.  L.  C.  12.  §.  17.)  "No  greater 
insult  can  be  offered  to  Christ  than  to  suppose  that 
He  has  come  to  give  commandments,  to  make  a  sort 
of  Moses  of  him."  (Tischr.  S.  66).  "Only  the  mad 
and  blind  Papists  do  such  a  thing."  (Wittenb.  V. 
292  B.)  "Christ's  work  consists  in  this:  to  fulfill  the 
law  for  us,  not  to  give  laws  to  us  and  to  redeem  us." 
(Ibid.)  "The  devil  makes  of  Christ  a  mere  Moses." 
(Walch,  VIII.  58.) 

Luther  evidently  was  not  any  more  an  admirer  of 
Moses  than  he  was,  at  times,  of  the  Decalogue.  His 
personal  hatred  for  the  great  advocate  of  the  law  was 
roused  because  of  his  zeal  in  enforcing  the  obligation 
of  keeping  the  Commandments.  The  ridicule  he  heaped 
on  Moses  passed  to  the  masses  and  not  a  criminal  from 
that  time  on  that  has  not  wished  that  the  Law-giver 
and  the  Commandments  he  proclaimed  had  never  ex- 
isted. To  displace  in  men's  minds  and  hearts  the  wise 
and  beneficent  code  of  morality  God  gave  to  mankind 
IS  nothing  less  than  criminal.  There  is  not  one  of  our 
interests  that  the  Decalogue  does  not  surround  with  the 
most  sacred  barriers.  Upon  its  observance  depend  the 
glory,  tranquillity  and  prosperity  of  mankind  in  this 
world  and  their  felicitv  in  the  next.     To  trifle  with 


122  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Heaven-given  law  and  weaken  its  importance  is  a 
scandal  and  can  only  result  in  complete  disrespect  and 
disregard  for  all  legitimate  authority,  a  curse  which  is 
unfortunately  not  unknown  in  the  world  of  to-day. 
In  the  presence  of  the  general  depravity  of  the  hour, 
it  is  high  time  to  proclaim  from  the  house-tops  that 
the  sweet  and  gentle  Gospel  of  the  Saviour  of  men 
still  exists  in  all  its  pristine  beauty  and  force,  that  it 
tells  plainly  and  clearly  what  all  must  do  or  omit,  and 
that  it  is  only  by  following  its  sublime  injunctions  that 
men  can  be  freed  from  the  error,  impiety,  libertinism, 
hatred,  discord  and  all  the  other  evils  which  makes  Hfe 
in  the  world  to-day  a  long  and  bitter  torment. 

Luther,  as  we  learn  from  the  evidence  presented, 
held  very  singular  views  regarding  sin  and  its  com- 
mission. We  do  not  wish  to  insinuate  that  he  actually 
taught  and  approved  sin,  for  we  know  that  he  did  as  a 
rule  instruct  men  to  avoid  violations  of  the  law  and 
repress  the  concupiscence  leading  thereto.  But  we  do 
hold  that  his  whole  theory  of  justification  by  faith 
alone  and  his  denial  of  moral  freedom,  making  "God 
the  author  of  what  is  evil  in  us,"  necessarily  broke 
down  the  usual  barriers  against  sin,  and  that  his  moral 
recommendations  very  often  in  the  plainest  of  language 
did  actually  and  openly  encourage  sin.  His  consum- 
ing thought  is  to  "believe."  "No  other  sin,"  he  says, 
"exists  in  the  world  save  unbelief.  All  others  are  mere 
trifles.  .  .  .  All  sins  shall  be  forgiven  if  we  only  believe 
in  Christ."  This  thought  of  the  all-forgiving  nature 
of  faith  so  dominated  his  mind  that  it  excluded  the 
notion  of  contrition,  penance,  good  works  or  effort  on 
the  part  of  the  believer  and  thus  his  teaching  destroyed 
root  and  branch  the  whole  idea  of  human  culpability 
and  responsibility  for  the  breaking  of  the  Command- 
ments. 

Now,  let  us  see  the  teaching  of  Luther  in  its  practical 
working.  He  was  frequently  asked  for  advice  on 
moral  questions  by  his  friends  who  were  grievously 
troubled  on  account  of  certain  temptations  and  who 
desired  to  know  the  best  means  to  be  used  to  overcome 


Luther  and  Justification  12a 

the  affliction  of  their  souls.  One  of  these  was  Jerome 
Weller,  a  former  pupil  of  Luther's  and  one  of  the  table 
companions  who  took  notes  for  the  "Table-Talk.''  This 
young  man  was  long  and  grievously  tormented  with 
anxiety  of  mind  and  was  unable  to  quiet,  by  means  of 
the  new  Evangel,  the  scruples  of  conscience  which  were 
driving  him  to  despair.  When  he  asked  for  advice  in 
his  sad  state  of  soul  Luther  sent  him  the  followmg 
strange  reply :  "Poor  Jerome  Weller,  you  have  temp- 
tations ;  they  must  be  overcome.  When  the  devil  comes 
to  tempt  and  harass  you  with  thoughts  of  the  kind  you 
allude  to,  have  recourse  at  once  to  conversation,  diink 
more  freely,  be  jocose  and  playful  and  even  indulge 
some  sin  in  hatred  of  the  evil  spirit  and  to  torment  him, 
to  leave  him  no  room  to  make  us  over-zealous  aoout 
the  merest  trifles;  otherwise  we  are  beaten  if  we  are 
too  nervously  sensitive  about  guarding  against  sin.  If 
the  devil  says  to  you,  *Will  you  not  stop  drinking,  an- 
swer him :  I  will  drink  all  the  more  because  you  f o/bid 
it ;  I  will  drink  great  draughts  in  the  name  and  to  the 
honor  of  Jesus  Christ/  Imitate  me.  I  never  driuK  so 
well,  I  never  eat  so  much,  I  never  enjoy  myself  so  well 
at  table  as  when  I  am  vexing  the  devil  who  is  prepared 
to  mock  and  harass  me.  Oh,  that  I  could  paint  sin  in 
a  fair  light,  so  as  to  mock  at  the  devil  and  make  him 
see  that  I  acknowledge  no  sin  and  am  not  conscious 
of  having  committed  any !  I  tell  you,  we  must  put  all 
the  Ten  Commandments,  with  which  the  devil  tempts 
and  plagues  us  so  greatly,  out  of  sight  and  out  of  mind. 
If  the  devil  upbraids  us  with  our  sins  and  declares  us 
to  be  deserving  of  death  and  hell,  then  we  must  say : 
*I  confess  that  I  have  merited  death  and  hell,'  but  what 
then  ?  Are  you  for  that  reason  to  be  damned  eternally  ? 
By  no  means.  T  know  One  Who  suffered  and  made 
satisfaction  for  me,  viz.,  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of 
God.  Where  He  is,  there  also  I  shall  be."  (De  Wette, 
I  V.  i88.) 

Here  we  have  a  characteristic  sample  of  Luther's 
strange  asceticism  and  astounding  liberalism.  How 
different  all  this  is  from  what  Christ  and  His  Church 


124  The  Facts  About  Luther 

propound  for  the  expiation  of  sin  committed  and  the 
prevention  of  its  recurrence.  According  to  these,  we 
are  under  the  obligation  to  resist  the  irregular  ten- 
dencies of  the  heart  and  to  crucify  it  with  its  immoder- 
ate desires.  If  Luther  had  been  a  real  friend  of  Wel- 
ter's and  a  true  master  of  the  spiritual  life,  why  did 
he  not  counsel  him  to  avoid  sin  and  cultivate  a  more 
intimate  union  with  God  through  prayer,  penance,  and 
the  reception  of  the  sacraments  ?  Surely  he  must  have 
known  that  there  is  a  certain  demon,  according  to  the 
words  of  Jesus  Christ,  which  can  be  conquered  only 
by  fasting  and  prayer.  But  the  salutary  remedies  of 
the  Master  did  not  appeal  to  this  strange  man  who 
thought  that  faith  in  Christ  alone  washes  all  sin  away. 
He  preferred,  as  he  said,  "to  leave  these  fine  recipes  to 
the  stupid  Papists."  Abhorring  the  thought  of  penance 
and  mortification  and  denying  the  necessity  of  good 
works,  nothing,  however,  more  efficacious  might  be 
expected  than  the  vile  and  pernicious  prescription  he 
gave  to  Weller.  The  true  spiritual  director  was  never 
known  to  advise  more ''liberal  potations,"  ''to  seek  com- 
pany," and  "to  indulge  in  jest  and  play"  in  order  to  foil 
the  devil.  Like  the  blind  leader  of  the  blind,  he  wanted 
something  unheard  of  before,  something  novel,  some- 
thing startling  to  put  the  devil  to  flight  and  that,  in  his 
estimation,  was  always  when  troubled  with  scruples  of 
conscience  to  be  heedless  of  sin  and  indulge  even  in 
more  frivolity  than  Satan  suggested.  Thus  with  a  bold- 
ness that  was  never  equalled,  he  unblushingly  recom- 
mended remedies,  which  to  say  the  least,  were  most 
dangerous  to  weak  and  afflicted  souls  and  calculated 
to  undermine  the  binding  force  of  the  Decalogue  in 
the  eyes  and  thoughts  of  men.  Only  one  mentally 
unbalanced  and  spiritually  deranged  could  advance 
such  a  rule  of  conduct  in  defiance  of  all  the  proprieties 
prescribed  and  sanctioned  by  law  and  order. 

The  unholy  counsels  which  Luther  gave  to  Weller,  to 
despise  sin  and  to  meet  temptation  by  frivolitv,  are 
explained  in  grer.ter  fulness  in  the  "Table-Talk,"  a 
work  which  was  compiled  by  his  pupils  and  in  which 


Luther  and  Justification  125 

his  teaching  is  recorded  in  most  disgusting  detail. 
"How  often,"  he  says,  "have  I  taken  with  my  wife 
those  Hberties  which  nature  permits  merely  in  ordei 
to  get  rid  of  Satan's  temptations.  Yet  all  to  no  pur- 
pose, for  he  refused  to  depart :  for  Satan,  as  the  author 
of  death,  has  depraved  our  nature  to  such  an  extent 
that  we  will  not  admit  any  consolation.  Hence  I  advise 
every  one  who  is  able  to  drive  away  these  Satanic 
thoughts  by  diverting  his  mind,  to  do  so,  for  instance, 
by  thinking  of  a  pretty  girl,  of  money-making,  or  of 
drink,  or,  in  fine,  by  means  of  some  other  vivid  emo- 
tion." (Colloq.  ed.  Bindsell,  2  p.  299.)  **Let  us  fix 
our  mind  on  other  thoughts"  he  had  also  said  to  Schla- 
ginhaufen,  "on  thoughts  of  dancing,  or  of  a  pretty  girl, 
that  also  is  good."  Such,  according  to  his  own  confes- 
sion, were  the  means  he  employed  himself  and  advised 
others  to  use  to  get  rid  of  the  disquieting  tinges  of  con- 
science. Had  he  desired  to  recall  the  teaching  and 
practise  of  the  Catholic  Church  how  vastly  different 
would  have  been  his  advice  to  the  sorely  tried  in  their 
moments  of  temptations  when  prayer  for  God's  help, 
true  humility  and  earnest  striving  after  a  change  of 
heart  are  alone  efficacious. 

Luther's  fullest  contempt  for  violations  of  the  Deca- 
logue are  found  in  the  famous  letter  he  addressed  from 
the  Wartburg  under  date  of  August  ist,  1521,  to  his 
most  intimate  friend,  Melanchthon,  to  encourage  him 
with  regard  to  possible  sins  of  the  past  and  prepare 
him  to  meet  temptations  in  the  future.  The  reader 
who  is  anxious  to  see  the  letter  in  its  entirety  can  find 
it  in  Grisar,  Volume  HI,  page  ig6.  His  advice  is 
couched  in  the  following  words :  "Be  a  sinner,  and  sin 
boldly,  but  believe  more  boldly  still.  .  .  .  We  must  sin 
as  long  as  we  are  what  we  are  ...  sin  shall  not  drag 
us  away  from  Him  (Christ)  even  should  we  commit 
fornication  or  murder,  thousands  and  thousands  of 
times  a  day"  provided  the  sinner  only  believed.  Thus 
he  repeats,  against  the  trr^litional  view  of  sin  and  grace, 
his  teaching  of  iustification  by  faith  alone. 

In  his  estimation  sin  now  must  be  regarded  as  some- 


^ 


126  The  Facts  About  Luther 

thing  harmless  in  view  of  the  satisfying  redemption  of 
Christ  by  faith.  This  is  the  culmination  of  all  his 
practical  ideas  of  religion.  "Be  a  sinner,"  he  says, 
''sin  boldly  and  fearlessly."  The  command  embodied 
in  the  unauspicious  words  sets  at  naught  all  the  laws 
of  morality  and  gives  wide  scope  to  human  freedom 
and  to  disorder.  The  thought  of  the  degrading  recom- 
mendation makes  the  blood  run  cold  in  the  veins  of 
decent,  law-abiding  people.  In  the  face  of  the  infa- 
mous suggestion,  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  men 
with  any  pretentions  to  reverence  for  the  Decalogue 
can  be  found  to  designate  one,  who  so  unblushingly 
urges  its  violation,  as  a  ''dear  man  of  God."  If  the 
author  of  such  an  infamous  suggestion,  as  is  involved 
in  the  words,  "sin  boldly,"  was  not  a  child  of  Satan 
none  ever  labored  so  strenuously  in  advancing  his  soul- 
destroying  principles. 

The  defenders  of  Luther  do  not  deny  the  recom- 
mendation he  addressed  to  Melanchthon,  To  hide  its 
grossness,  however,  they,  in  the  blasphetoiy  of  despair, 
have  edited  and  interpreted  the  recommendation  so 
as  to  give  it  a  turn  and  a  meaning  altogether  unwar- 
ranted and  tmtenable.  Luther  said :  "Be  a  sinner  and 
sin  boldly."  His  supporters,  to  hoodwink  and  deceive 
their  followers,  claim  that  the  imperative  mood  used  by 
Luther  is  not  here  to  be  read  imperatively  and  accord- 
ing to  them,  "Be  a  sinner  and  sin  boldly"  means  "even 
supposing  thou  art  a  sinner  and  dost  sin  boldly."  This 
interpretation  is  ingenious,  but  like  all  their  methods  of 
defense  to  escape  from  the  infamy  of  Luther's  teach- 
ing, as  Anderdon  remarks,  "the  deploying  of  impera- 
tives into  subjunctives,  suppositions,  exaggerations, 
reductions  ad  ahsnrdum,  will  never  make  the  impera- 
tive mood  read  otherwise  than  as  a  clear,  distinct  in- 
junction. Until  some  more  formidable  line  of  defense 
be  invented,  we  must  take  Luther's  words  to  mean,  as 
they  manifestly  indicate,  a  recommendation,  an  exhor- 
tation and  an  injunction  to  mutiny,  rebellion  and  dis- 
obedience to  the  Supreme  Law-giver  who  directed  all 
to  observe  and  not  disrespect  His  Commandments." 


Luther  and  Justification  127 

Luther's  pronouncement,  ''Be  a  sinner  and  sin  boldly," 
has  only  one  meaning,  namely,  a  command  to  transgress 
the  Divine  law,  insult  God  and  open  up  the  way  to  the 
commission  of  crime  and  iniquity.  If  Luther  knew  his 
Bible  as  thoroughly  as  his  advocates  suppose,  how 
could  he,  unless  he  was  devoid  of  the  elementary  in- 
stinct of  common  propriety,  advise  his  friend  Melanch- 
thon  to  provoke  the  divine  justice  by  the  commission 
of  sin  and  expose  him  thereby  to  the  wilful  risk  of 
eternal  chastisement?  Had  Luther  been  a  true  friend 
to  Melanchthon  and  a  trusted  spiritual  guide,  he  would 
have  counselled  him  to  cease  to  *'sin,"  and  not  "to  have 
strong  sins,"  for  only  then  faith  in  Christ  brings  con- 
solation, joy  and  peace.  Had  he  not  been  dominated 
by  his  unbounded  self-sufficiency,  he  might  have  re- 
called with  profit  the  Divine  warning  so  often  repeated 
in  Scripture:  ''Flee  from  sins  as  from  the  face  of  a 
serpent;  for  if  thou  comest  near  them,  they  will  take 
hold  of  thee.  The  teeth  thereof  are  the  teeth  of  a 
lion,  killing  the  souls  of  men.  All  iniquity  is  like  a 
two-edged  sword ;  there  is  no  remedy  for  the  wound 
thereof."  (Ecclesiasticus  XXI,  i,  3.)  To  recall  these 
or  other  words  of  Scripture  to  Melanchthon  would  have 
been  a  kindness,  but  this  was  not  Luther's  way  once 
his  mind  was  made  up  to  minimize,  if  possible,  the 
influence  of  the  Commandments  in  the  lives  of  men. 

When  we  consider  his  own  behavior  and  the  dan- 
gerous advice  he  gave  his  friends,  we  are  led  to 
believe  that  only  one  devoid  of  his  senses  or  one  mor- 
ally weak  could  condone,  palliate  and  defend  sin, 
which  is  always  contemptible  both  from  a  natural  and 
a  supernatural  point  of  view,  and  is  ever  a  base  act 
of  cowards  who  are  too  indifferent  to  conform  their 
lives  to  the  Divine  code  of  morality.  Account  as  we 
may  for  Luther's  suggestion  to  Melanchthon,  the  fact 
remains  that  he  brazenly  trifled  with  the  soul-destroy- 
ing principle  of  sin  to  spread  corruption  from  that  day 
to  this  in  the  body  politic.  The  debasing  teaching  he 
shamefully  advanced  struck  a  mighty  blow  at  the 
foundation  on  which  all  laws  repose,  and,  as  might 


128  The  Facts  About  Luther 

be  expected,  a  deplorable  relaxation  of  principle  among 
the  deluded  came  along,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  curse 
the  earth  from  that  day  to  this.  Following  the  ex- 
ample of  Luther,  many  ever  since  have  been  loud  in 
their  praise  of  sin,  and  at  times  the  more  revolting 
it  is  the  greater  are  the  encomiums  of  it. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  Luther  taught  that  "good 
works  are  useless,"  that  "they  are  sin,"  and,  in  fact, 
"impossible."  In  his  "Babylonian  Captivity"  (Chap, 
de  Bapt.)  he  says,  "The  way  to  heaven  is  narrow;  if 
you  wish  to  pass  through  it,  throw  away  your  good 
works."  "Those  pious  souls,"  he  says  further,  "who 
do  good  to  gain  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  not  only  will 
never  succeed,  but  they  must  even  be  reckoned  among 
the  impious ;  and  it  is  more  important  to  guard  them 
against  good  works  than  against  sin."  (Wittenb.  VI. 
i6o.)  Thus,  good  works,  the  practise  of  piety,  and 
the  observance  of  the  Divine  commandments,  the  only 
way,  according  to  Jesus  Christ,  which  leads  to  eternal 
life,  are  in  his  estimation  troublesome  superfluities,  of 
which  Christian  liberty  must  rid  us.  Rather,  accord- 
ing to  this  false  teacher,  they  are  invincible  obstacles 
to  salvation,  if  one  places  the  least  reliance  upon  them. 
"Faith  alone,"  said  he,  "is  necessary  for  Justification : 
nothing  else  is  commanded  or  forbidden."  "Believe, 
and  henceforth  you  are  as  holy  as  St.  Peter." 

To  bring  these  horrible  doctrines,  which  sought  to 
take  from  the  sacraments  their  efficacy  and  saving 
grace  into  disrepute  was  his  avoved  object.  The 
utility  and  importance  of  the  sacramental  system  of 
the  Church  once  destroyed,  it  may  easily  be  imagined 
what  scope  would  be  given  to  the  passions  and  how  the 
greatest  excesses  were  likely  to  be  committed.  The 
influence  exerted  by  the  doctrine  we  have  just  men- 
tioned immediately  produced  a  great  and  widespread 
deterioration  of  morals,  both  public  and  private.  Of 
this  the  writings  of  Luther's  age  and  of  that  immedi- 
ately following  furnish  incontestable  proof.  Out  of 
many  unsuspected  Lutheran  authorities  we  take  one 
who  was  Luther's  pupil  and  a  boarder  in  his  house. 


Luther  and  Justification  129 

namely,  John  Mathesins.  He  complains  of  the  spread 
of  immorality,  infidelity  and  oppression  brought  about 
through  the  introduction  of  the  Reformation  and  states 
the  cause  of  it  all  in  these  words:  '*Many  false 
brethren,  who  Hatter  the  people  and  ascribe  all  to  the 
justification  by  faith,  do  not  wish  to  hear  anything  of 
good  works,  but  say  openly :  only  have  faith  and  do 
as  you  please,  good  or  evil,  it  will  not  harm  you  as 
long  as  you  are  predestinated  to  be  saved."  The  same 
notorious  fact  concerning-  the  deterioration  of  morals 
is  referred  to  in  the  sermons,  correspondence,  and 
other  writings  of  the  "Reformers,"  and  those  of  the 
Humanists,  who,  like  Erasmus,  at  that  time  sided  de- 
cidedly neither  with  the  Reformers  nor  with  the 
Church.  So,  too,  do  Hume,  Robertson,  Macauley,  and 
Lecky,  even  while  they,  each  in  his  own  way,  endeavor 
to  disparage  the  Catholic  religion. 

Immediately  on  the  preaching  of  this  doctrine,  crimes 
increased  in  number  and  enormity.  In  all  classes 
frivolity  and  every  kind  of  vice,  sin  and  disgrace  were 
much  greater  than  formerly.  Men  quickly  learned  the 
lessons  taught  them  both  by  the  precepts  and  the  exam- 
ple of  their  master.  Setting  up  the  rule  unfolded  to 
them  for  their  guidance  they  scoffed  at  and  defied 
authority,  secular  and  spiritual.  In  the  name  of  ''J^^s- 
tification  by  faith  alone,"  they  dispensed  themselves 
from  performing  good  works  and  without  activity  in 
the  cause  of  goodness,  they  gradually  fell  into  serious 
breaches  of  the  Divine  law.  A  rigid  Pharisaical  sever- 
ity on  certain  points  was  united  with  utter  license  as 
regards  many  of  the  plainest  obligations  of  religion 
and  morality.  The  statute  books  of  the  several  princi- 
palities of  which  Germany  was  then  composed,  of 
Belgium  and  the  Netherlands,  of  France  and  Switzer- 
land, and  of  England,  the  severe  measures  resorted 
to  by  the  magistrates  to  repress  general  lawlessness,  of 
which  they  complain  in  their  official  reports  and  declare 
themselves  unable  to  check,  furnish  indisputable  evi- 
dence directly  to  the  point.  But  it  is  needless  to  mul- 
tiply proofs.    We  call  Luther  himself  as  witness  and 


180  TFtj;  Facts  About  Luther 

give  his  own  declaration  as  to  the  effects  produced 
upon  morahty  and  religion  by  the  new  gospel  of  ''faith 
without  works." 

'1  would  not  be  astonished/'  he  says,  "if  God  should 
open  the  gates  and  windows  of  hell,  and  snow  or  rain 
down  devils,  or  rain  down  on  our  heads  fire  and  brim- 
stone, or  bury  us  in  a  fiery  abyss  as  he  did  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah.  Had  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  received  the 
gifts  that  have  been  granted  to  us,  had  they  seen  our 
visions  and  received  our  instructions,  they  would  yet 
be  standing.  They  were  a  thousand  times  less  culpa- 
ble than  Germany,  for  they  had  not  received  the  Word 
of  God  from  their  preachers.  ...  If  Germany  will 
act  thus,  I  am  ashamed  to  be  one  of  her  children  or 
speak  her  language ;  and  if  I  were  permitted  to  impose 
silence  on  my  conscience,  I  would  call  in  the  Pope  and 
assist  him  and  his  minions  to  forge  new  chains  for 
us.  Formerly,  when  we  were  the  slaves  of  Satan, 
when  we  profaned  the  name  of  God  .  .  .  money  could 
be  procured  for  endowing  churches,  for  raising  semi- 
naries, for  maintaining  superstition.  Now  that  we 
know  the  Divine  word,  that  we  have  learned  to  honor 
the  blood  of  our  Martyr-God,  no  one  wishes  to  give  any- 
thing. The  children  are  neglected,  and  no  one  teaches 
them  to  serve  God." 

"Since  the  downfall  of  Popery,  and  the  cessations  of 
excommunications  and  spiritual  penalties,  the  people 
have  learned  to  despise  the  word  of  God.  They  care 
no  longer  for  the  churches ;  they  have  ceased  to  fear 
and  honor  God.  ...  I  would  wish  if  it  were  possible 
to  leave  these  men  without  preacher  or  pastor,  and 
let  them  live  like  swine.  There  is  no  longer  any  fear 
or  love  of  God  among  them.  After  throwing  off  the 
yoke  of  the  Pope  every  one  wishes  to  live  as  he 
pleases." 

This  declaration  of  Luther  is  significant,  and  testi- 
monies from  almost  every  writer  of  eminence,  who 
touches  upon  the  state  of  society  as  regards  religion 
and  morals  in  every  country  where  Protestantism  had 
a  foothold  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 


Luther  and  Justification  131 

might  be  adduced  in  confirmation  of  it.  So  notorious 
was  the  debauchery  of  the  followers  of  Luther  that 
it  became  a  common  saying  when  persons  proposed  to 
engage  in  drunkenness  and  revelry :  "We  will  spend 
the  day  like  Luther  mis." 

The  new  Gospel  did  not  even  make  Luther  himself 
better.  He  said :  '1  confess  .  .  .  that  I  am  more  negli- 
gent than  I  was  under  the  Pope  and  there  is  now 
nowhere  such  an  amount  of  earnestness  under  the 
Gospel,  as  was  formerly  seen  among  monks  and 
priests."  (Walch,  IX.  1311.)  "If  God,"  he  says, 
"had  not  closed  my  eyes  and  if  I  had  foreseen  these 
scandals,  I  would  never  have  begun  to  teach  the  Gos- 
pel."    (Walch,  VI,  920.) 

"But  it  is  not  necessary,"  as  a  writer  in  the  American 
Catholic  Quarterly  Review  says,  "to  go  back  to  past 
ages  of  the  so-called  Reformation  to  decide  whether  it 
has  produced  a  real  reformation  as  regards  morality. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  look  upon  facts  existing  all 
around  us  to-day.  Protestantism  has  existed  now  for 
nearly  four  hundred  years  and  has  had  ample  time  to 
show  what  improvement  it  can  efTect  or  has  effected 
as  regards  morality.  Yet,  notwithstanding  all  the 
efforts  still  made,  here  and  there,  to  perpetuate  the  old 
traditional  falsehood  of  the  superiority  of  Protestan- 
tism over  the  Catholic  religion  in  promoting  morality, 
the  most  thoughtful  and  candid  even  of  Protestants 
award  the  palm  to  Catholicity ;  and  the  general  verdict 
of  public  opinion  is  fast  confirming  this  decision.  It 
is  not  necessary  to  refer  to  official  statistics  of  crime 
and  social  immorality,  which  have  been  published  and 
repubhshed,  analyzed,  and  exhaustively  discussed  by 
such  non-Catholic  writers  as  Laing,  IVIayhew,  Wolsey, 
Bayard  Taylor,  Dr.  Bellows,  and  many  others,  to  prove 
that  Protestant  countries  are  not  in  advance  of  those 
where  Catholicity  predominates  as  respects  morality." 

"It  is  acknowledged  by  almost  all  who  have  any  real 
knowledge  of  the  subject  that  in  point  of  purity  of 
morals  Catholic  Spain  and  the  really  Catholic  part  of 
the  people  of  France  and  Italy  are  immeasurably  above 


132  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  people  of  Protestant  Germany,  Denmark,  Sweden 
and  Norway;  and  that  judged  by  every  test  applicable 
to  morality — female  chastity,  integrity  and  sobriety — 
Catholic  Ireland  is  far  in  advance  of  Protestant  Scot- 
land. The  inhabitants  of  Tyrol — during  past  centuries 
and  to-day  the  most  staunch  and  exclusive  Catholic 
population  in  Europe — beyond  all  denial,  stand  above 
the  people  of  Protestant  Switzerland  with  regard  to 
morality.  The  lazzaroni  of  Naples,  for  years  the  stand- 
ing gibe  and  jest  of  Protestant  travelers,  are  immeas- 
urably less  debased  as  regards  morality  than  persons  on 
the  same  social  plane  in  England.  Coming  nearer 
home — for  every  act  of  brigandage,  murder,  or  rob- 
bery in  Italy  and  Spain,  there  might  be  truthfully  re- 
counted ten  in  the  United  States." 

'•'This  brings  us  still  closer  to  our  point.  Compare 
the  virtue  and  integrity  here,  in  our  country,  and  in 
England,  of  the  persons  who  are  under  the  respective 
influences  of  the  CathoHc  religion  and  of  Protestantism, 
and  the  general  public  voice  ascribes  superiority  to  the 
former.  Where  is  the  boasted  morality  of  New  Eng- 
land, the  cradle  and  home  of  Puritanism  ?  How  stand, 
as  regards  social  morals  or  honesty,  the  descendants 
of  the  Tilgrim  Fathers?'  And  what  are  the  moral 
consequences  of  their  principles  as  they  have  per- 
meated the  public  mind  outside  of  persons  who  believe 
in  and  practise  the  Catholic  religion?  Witness  the 
countless  prosecutions  for  bigamy,  for  the  violations 
of  the  obligation  of  the  marriage  relation,  for  adultery 
and  seduction ;  the  applications  for  divorces,  and  the 
scandals,  frauds,  etc.  which  crowd  the  records  of  our 
courts  and  the  reportorial  columns  of  the  newspapers." 

'Tt  seems  that  God,  in  His  justice,  had  determined 
summarily  and  at  once  to  dispel  the  traditional  delu- 
sion of  the  superiority  of  Protestantism  aver  the 
Catholic  rehgion  in  point  of  morals,  and  to  refute  once 
and  forever  the  false  charge,  so  long  and  persistently 
brought  against  the  latter,  by  compelling  people  to  open 
their  eyes  and  look  at  the  facts  staring  them  in  the 


Luther  and  Justification  133 

It  is  not  a  pleasant  task  to  tell  the  story  of  hideous 
crime,  no  matter  by  whom  committed.  We  would  that 
there  were  no  sin  in  the  world  to  record.  If  we  allude 
to  the  gross  immoralities  that  followed  everywhere 
among  the  peoples  that  adopted  the  soul-destroying 
principles  announced  by  Luther,  we  do  so  with  feel- 
ings of  shame,  and  in  self-defense  against  the  gratui- 
tous allegations  of  our  adversaries.  We  certainly  do 
not  wish  to  prove  that  all  Catholics  avail  themselves 
of  the  means  their  Church  provides  for  attaining  to 
sanctity  of  life,  nor  do  we  wish  to  excuse  or  palliate 
the  corruption  of  morals  sometimes  found  in  their  be- 
havior. We  cannot  close  our  eyes  to  the  painful  fact 
that  too  many  professing  Catholics,  far  from  living  up 
to  the  teachings  of  their  Church,  are  sources  of  melan- 
choly scandal.  "It  must,  however,  be  that  scandals 
come,"  but  their  occasional  occurrence  among  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Church  do  not  invalidate  or  impair  the 
sacred  and  efficacious  means  she  furnishes  for  holi- 
ness of  life.  We  know  that  some  Catholics  are  a  dis- 
grace to  their  religion  and  that  they  ought  to  be  much 
better  than  they  are  considering  the  potent  means  ever 
at  their  call.  Yet,  with  Cardinal  Gibbons,  we  will  add. 
quoting  his  words  in  the  Catholic  World:  "If  we  are 
not  very  much  better  than  our  neighbors,  we  are  not 
any  worse;  and  are  not  to  be  hounded  down  with  the 
cry  of  vice  and  immorality  by  a  set  of  Pharisees  who 
are  constantly  lauding  their  own  superiority,  and  thank- 
ing God  they  are  so  much  better  than  we  poor 
Catholics." 

We  have  been  careful  in  this  paper  to  furnish  the 
reader  with  Luther's  own  words  describing  his  teach- 
ing on  the  absolute  uselessness  of  all  the  hitherto,  and 
even  now  generally  accepted  means  for  avoiding  sin 
and  helpful  for  attaining  sanctification.  A  cursory 
examination  of  the  system  he  fathered  shows  it,  as  Fr. 
Johnston  points  out,  to  be  absolutely  "at  variance  with 
all  Christian  ideas  on  the  subject  both  before  his  age 
and  even  now.  Even  a  modern  Protestant  by  his  de- 
votion to  prayer  and  penance  and  good  works  practi- 


134  The  Facts  About  Luther 

cally  repudiates  this  system  of  morality  of  a  man  whom 
he  otherwise  so  bHndly  and  inconsistently  venerates  as 
a  great  'Reformer.'  In  fact,  such  a  system  is  contra- 
dictory to  even  the  most  elementary  psychology  and 
every  day  experience.  It  is  at  variance  with  the  idea 
of  penance  and  sin  held  by  even  the  non-Christian 
religions  such  as  Buddhism  and  Brahminism — as  such 
it  is  about  the  lowest  and  the  most  hedonistic  in  the 
whole  history  of  religions.  In  a  word  it  is  unique. 
There  is  nothing  in  Christianity,  ancient,  medieval  or 
modern,  like  it — nor  in  any  other  religion.  Followed 
out  to  its  logical  conclusion,  it  can  end  only  in  unre- 
stricted moral  license.  The  reason  that  it  is  not  fol- 
lowed out  by  Protestants  is  partly  because  they  practi- 
cally deny  in  practise  the  Lutheran  faith  they  hold  in 
theory,  partly  because  they  are,  as  a  class,  densely 
ignorant  of  the  real  crass  Luther  and  Lutheranism ; 
partly  because  their  very  common  sense  and  sense  of 
decency  and  week-day  psychology  save  them  from  their 
own  faith." 

From  Luther*s  own  words  we  learn  the  distinctly 
heretical  and  truth  destroying  character  of  his  teaching 
which  struck  at  the  roots  of  man's  relation  with  God. 
Faith  with  him,  as  Anderdon  remarks,  "was  no  longer 
what  it  had  been  through  all  previous  Christianity,  the 
supernatural  grace,  the  gift  from  Heaven,  by  which 
man  is  enabled  to  accept  and  to  retain  a  Revelation 
external  to  himself  and  in  its  fullness.  It  became 
simply  a  strong  persuasion  of  one's  individual  accep- 
tance with  God.  Faith  as  propounded  by  the  Church 
contemplates  God,  and  what  He  has  said  and  done, 
warned  and  promised ;  faith  as  propounded  by  Luther, 
regards  the  individual,  who  takes  hold  upon  and  appro- 
priates to  himself  the  results  of  what  God  has  done. 
The  essence  of  Catholic  faith  lies  in  God's  Catholic 
or  universal  truthfulness,  projected  in  outline  upon 
His  mystical  Body,  through  all  place  and  time.  It 
is  independent  of  individual  minds  and  as  high 
above  'religious  opinions'  as  the  heavens  are  above  the 
earth.     The  Lutheran  faith,  so  called,  is  a  mongrel 


Luther  AND  Justification  135 

thing,  partly  personal  belief,  partly  hope  of  acceptance, 
except  that  it  rests  on  a  personal  assurance,  and  so  is 
allied  to  presumption.  Catholic  faith  is  the  mainspring 
of  active  obedience,  'working  one's  salvation' ;  the 
Lutheran  substitute  is  a  principle  of  a  dreamy  acqui- 
escence, that  contemplates  "a  finished  work"  on  the 
part  of  the  Savior.  Again  the  Church  teaches,  that 
faith,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  hand  love  or 
the  state  of  grace,  though  they  have  great  mutual  re- 
lations, are  distinct  gifts.  The  former  may  exist  with- 
out the  other,  as  in  the  case  of  every  bad  Catholic,  who 
will  be  lost,  without  true  repentance  for  his  personal 
sins,  in  spite  of  his  baptism  and  of  the  most  unclouded 
faith.  With  Luther,  faith  does  not  imply  distinct  dog- 
matic truth ;  its  creed  is  summed  up  in  this,  'I  am  a 
justified  man ;  therefore  I  cannot  lose  my  faith  and  fall 
from  acceptance ;  therefore  sin  in  me  is  not  imputed  as 
sin.'  "  This  is  Luther's  teaching,  novel,  soothing,  agree- 
able to  human  nature,  if  you  will,  but  it  is  not  Christ's 
nor  that  of  His  Church  which  is  His  organ  of  com- 
municating supernatural  truth  and  the  means  of  ac- 
quiring sanctification. 

Luther's  teaching  may  appeal  to  such  as  decline  to 
look  things  in  the  face  and  want  the  subjective  in  re- 
ligion, in  lieu  of  the  objective  dogmatic  truth;  but  it 
can  never  appeal  to  the  enlightened  of  God  who  know 
that  His  will  is  their  sanctification,  and,  that  they  must 
labor  in  this  life  by  good  works,  by  prayer,  by  the 
observance  of  the  Commandments,  and  the  reception 
of  the  Sacraments,  to  make  their  calling  and  election 
sure.  Faith  and  good  works  are  the  only  terms  on 
which  men  can  purchase  happiness  here  and  hereafter ; 
every  other  scheme  is  a  deceit  of  Lucifer  to  draw  souls 
away  from  the  love  and  service  of  God. 

This  statement  is  not  made  without  foundation. 
Read  Luther's  work  against  "The  Mass  and  the  Or- 
dination of  Priests,"  where  he  tells  of  his  famous  dis- 
putation with  the  ''father  of  lies"  who  accosted  him 
"at  midnight"  and  spoke  to  him  with  "a  deep,  powerful 
voice,"  causing  "the  sweat  to  break  forth"  from  his 


136  The  Facts  About  Luther 

brow  and  his  "heart  to  tremble  and  beat."  In  that 
celebrated  conference,  of  which  he  was  an  unexcep- 
tional witness  and  about  which  he  never  entertained 
the  slightest  doubt,  he  says  plainly  and  unmistakingly 
that  "the  devil  spoke  against  the  Mass,  and  Mary  and 
the  Saints"  and  that,  moreover,  "Satan  gave  him  the 
most  unqualified  approval  of  his  doctrine  of  justifica- 
tion by  faith  alone."  Who  now,  we  ask  in  all  sincerity, 
can  be  found,  except  those  appallingly  blind  to  truth, 
to  accept  such  a  man,  approved  by  the  enemy  of  souls, 
as  a  spiritual  teacher  and  entrust  to  his  guidance  their 
eternal  welfare? 


CHAPTER  V. 
Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope. 

ONE  of  the  most  certain  and  best  established  facts 
in  the  records  of  mankind  is  the  existence  of 
the  CathoHc  Church,  and  her  admirable  career  through- 
out the  ages. 

As  the  true  Messias,  Jesus  had  come  to  found  the 
Kingdom  of  God  on  earth — that  visible  and  universal 
kingdom,  that  new  alliance,  which,  according  to  the 
prophets,  He  should  inaugurate  for  all  ages  to  come. 
And,  in  point  of  fact,  Jesus  founded  this  Kingdom 
by  instituting  His  Church.  He  foretold  the  persecu- 
tions that  she  would  meet,  and  the  continual  struggles 
that  she  would  have  to  endure  in  all  the  centuries ; 
but  He  declared  that  the  powers  of  the  enemy  would 
never  prevail  against  His  Church,  because  He  will  be 
with  her,  and  she  will  last  to  the  end  of  the  world. 
And  the  Church,  which  has  now  existed  for  nearly 
twenty  centuries,  stands  before  all  as  an  undeniable 
fact  attesting  the  fulfillment  of  this  promise. 

The  Divinity  of  the  Christian  religion  is  a  fact  which 
all  the  efforts  of  sophistical  criticism  are  powerless  to 
deny  or  dispute.  Witness  its  rapid  and  wonderful 
propagation,  notwithstanding  the  thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  obstacles  that  opposed  it;  its  preservation  un- 
changed amid  continual  terrible  assaults ;  the  testimony 
of  millions  and  millions  of  martyrs  who  died  for  the 
faith ;  the  sanctity  of  the  Church  in  spite  of  the  defects 
of  some  of  her  members :  the  existence  of  miracles, 
which  illuminate  the  history  of  the  Church,  and  even 
to-(iay  occur  before  the  eyes  of  unbelievers  themselves; 
the  excellence  and  sublimity  of  the  morals  and  dogmas 
of  the  Christian  religion,  with  which  those  of  other 
faiths  can  bear  no  comparison ;  the  adherence  of  the 
greatest  intellects  to  the  teachings  of  Christianity. 
Weigh  all  these  facts  and  behold  so  many  unanswer- 
able arguments  that  demonstrate  the  Divinity  of  the 
religion  which  Jesus  Christ  established  in  order  that 


138  The  Facts  About  Luther 

all  men  for  all  time  should  come  to  salvation.  All 
considered,  therefore,  we  may  conclude  with  Richard 
of  St.  Victor :  **0  Lord !  if  we  are  mistaken,  it  is 
Thou  who  has  led  us  astray ;  because  this  faith  is 
proved  by  such  signs  and  prodigies  that  Thou  alone 
couldst  work  them." 

Luther,  in  the  earlier  period  of  his  life,  realized  that 
he  and  the  rest  of  men  could  come  to  salvation  only 
by  the  knowledge  and  practise  of  this  Religion,  of 
which  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Soul  and  the  Founder.  He 
knew,  as  demonstrated  by  Faith  and  Reason,  that 
Jesus  Christ  and. true  Religion  are  only  to  be  found 
in  the  Catholic  Church,  where  alone  the  Master 
teaches,  dispenses  His  graces  and  communicates  His 
Divine  spirit.  In  common  with  every  believer  of  his 
time  he  was  aware  of  the  existence  of  this  Church 
and  he  recognized  that  this  Church,  as  originally  estab- 
lished in  the  land  of  his  birth  and  as  it  had  prevailed 
there  for  centuries,  was  in  harmony  with  that  pre- 
vailing throughout  Christianity  and  dating  back  beyond 
all  civil  institutions,  and  was  the  one  sole  organization 
established  by  Christ  and  endowed  by  Him  with  per- 
petuity to  preach  His  Gospel  for  the  salvation  of  the 
world.  As  a  layman  he  knew  all  this,  as  a  priest  he 
taught  all  this,  and  as  a  doctor  of  Divinity  he  was 
ever  prepared  to  advocate  and  defend  all  this  against 
all  comers.  For  years  he  continued  true  to  his  con- 
victions and  to  all  appearances  exemplified  them  in  his 
daily  life.  But,  as  time  went  on,  he  gradually  became 
remiss  in  the  discharge  of  his  spiritual  duties  and  little 
by  little  came  to  abandon  them  entirely ;  wherefore  he 
lost  the  graces  of  his  vocation  and  in  consequence  his 
faith  diminished  and  his  allegiance  to  the  Church 
weakened.  By  his  own  admission,  as  we  have  seen, 
he  grew  careless  in  the  performance  of  his  monastic 
duties  and  daily  violated  the  plain  and  sacred  obliga- 
tions to  which  he  bound  himself  voluntarily  by  most 
solemn  vows.  Owing  to  the  habitual  neglect  of  prayer 
and  meditation  and  the  constant  infraction  of  the  rules 
of  his  Order,  he  went  down  the  scale  of  perfection 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       139 

step  by  step,  until,  as  is  invariably  the  case  in  such 
conditions,  his  perception  of  divine  truth  waned  and 
grew  weaker  day  by  day  until  finally  he  fell  into  a 
state  of  opposition  and  revolt  against  the  eternal  veri- 
ties and  the  one  true  medium  of  their  communication 
to  mankind.  Abandoning  the  light  of  heaven  which 
comes  from  persevering  prayer,  and  carried  away  by 
his  own  self-sufficiency,  he  began  to  question,  then  to 
ignore,  and,  finally,  to  deny  the  Divine  authority  of 
the  Church  in  which  he  was  reared.  He  seemed  to 
forget  that  the  Church  is  the  body  of  Christ,  the  in- 
dividual sacrament  of  unity  with  Christ  and  through 
Christ  with  God,  and  that  "whosoever  revolteth,"  ac- 
cording to  the  dictum  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  "and  hath 
not  the  doctrine  of  Christ,  hath  not  God."  But  he 
cared  little  for  so  solemn  a  pronouncement  and  longed 
only  for  emancipation  from  the  authority  of  the  laws 
of  God  and  of  His  Church  to  follow  his  own  ever 
varying  caprice  and  fancy. 

Possessed  now  by  the  spirit  of  disorder  and  oppo- 
sition to  law,  and  jealous  of  the  authority  of  the 
Church  and  the  God-given  supremacy  of  her  Head,  he 
conceived  the  idea  of  a  new  religion,  which  he  thought 
in  his  vanity  he  was  capable  of  formulating.  Forth- 
with, without  the  shadow  of  a  pretense  of  direct  and 
Divine  commission,  he  began  to  construct  what  he 
foolishly  considered  a  church,  and,  then  assumed 
the  right  to  inflict  and  impose  his  self-made  work 
upon  his  fellow-men.  In  his  wild  scheme  he  aimed 
at  getting  rid  of  the  Church's  sacramental  system  and 
banishing  altogether  from  men's  minds  the  very  idea 
of  an  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an  inward  and 
invisible  grace.  He  intended  to  take  from  men  the 
only  certain  voice,  which,  speaking  in  the  name  of 
God  and  representing  Him,  delivered  infallible  truth 
to  the  world  and  announced  authoritatively  the  means 
whereby  sanctification  and  salvation  were  to  be  se- 
cured. He  purposed,  in  a  wor  1,  to  overthrow,  an- 
nihilate and  displace  the  Mother  Church,  and  thus 
deprive  men  of  her  Divine  guidance  unto  truth,  moral- 


140  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ity  and  life  eternal.  In  his  conceit  he  imagined  men 
should  be  left  wholly  to  their  own  unaided  and  fallible 
reason,  and,  hence  he  proclaimed  the  right  of  all  with- 
out any  Church  interference  to  follow  in  matters  of 
belief  their  own  intellect  as  sole  and  final  judge.  In 
advancing  this  claim,  so  destructive  to  the  authority 
of  the  Church,  he  asserted  a  right  never  before  rec- 
ognized ;  a  right,  let  it  be  understood,  never  known 
under  any  other  form  of  revealed  religion;  a  right 
never  allowed  even  under  the  Jewish  theocracy;  and 
a  right  hardly  ever  exercised  among  the  more  en- 
lightened pagans.  His  program  was  one  of  the  most 
daring  in  all  human  histor}'.  Though  he  had  his  mis- 
givings about  the  propriety  and  success  of  his  sacrile- 
gious undertaking,  yet  he  hardened  his  heart  against 
these,  and  imagined  that  though  many  other  "insti- 
gators of  heresies  and  breeders  of  sects"  in  the  fifteen 
hundred  years  before  his  time  failed  in  measuring  their 
strength  against  the  Church  of  Christ,  he  could  not 
but  triumph.  His  attitude  was  bold,  defiant,  arrogant, 
persecuting.  He  would  overthrow  and  completely  de- 
stroy the  Church  of  his  fathers.  But  the  Founder 
of  this  Church  decreed  that  the  powers  of  hell  would 
not  prevail  against  His  institution,  and  Luther,  before 
he  closed  his  eyes  in  death,  saw  that  his  protest  was 
unavailing  and  that  his  self-made  substitute  for  God's 
enduring  work  was  doomed  to  meet  the  fate  of  all  the 
other  religious  innovations  that  scandalized  preceding 
ages. 

Luther  came  by  degrees  to  feel  that  he  was  some- 
thing more  than  Church  or  Pope  or  Councils.  In  his 
vanity  he  put  himself  above  all  the  great  and  learned 
lights  of  the  Church  and  claimed  to  know  more  than 
all  the  Schoolmen,  Doctors  and  Fathers  who  in  every 
age  were  noted  for  their  clear,  precise  and  exact  ex- 
position of  God's  revelation.  To  his  way  of  thinking 
all  the  great  and  saintly  writers  and  defenders  of  the 
Church,  Jerome,  Chrysostom,  Cyprian,  Basil,  Augus- 
tine, Thomas  Aquinas  and  the  rest,  "fell  into  error" 
and  "were  untrustworthy  teachers ;  pools  out  of  which 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope        111 

Christians  had  been  drinking  impure  and  loathsome 
water/'  In  his  mad  ravings  he  called  them  ''knaves, 
dolts,  asses,  and  infernal  blasphemers,"  ''knowing 
very  little  about  the  Gospel,  easily  deceived  by  the 
devil,  and  deserving  to  be  in  hell  rather  than  in 
heaven."  The  majestic  unity  and  the  calm,  unchang- 
ing enunciation  of  truth  which  characterized  tlie 
writings  of  the  Fathers  in  all  the  ages,  displeased, 
annoyed,  and  angered  this  false  prophet.  He  would 
have  none  of  them  or  their  teachings,  except  when 
some  fellow-rebel  against  Divine  authority  was  in  col- 
lision with  him  or  when  he  had  to  appeal  to  some 
authority  beyond  himself,  to  refute  an  adversary,  as 
for  instance,  when  he  has  to  put  down  Zwingle.  Other- 
wise he  had  no  use  for  the  recognized  and  authoritative 
exponents  of  the  faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints. 
They  were  in  the  way  of  the  advancement  of  his 
nefarious  scheme  and  their  influence  and  testimony 
to  the  uniform  and  universal  belief  of  mankind 
throughout  the  ages  should  be  destroyed.  The  Fathers 
and  the  Doctors  were  against  his  program ;  they  were 
one  and  all,  "asses,  rascals,  beasts.  Antichrists"  and 
"unworthy  of  a  hearing."  He  alone  was  right ;  h^- 
knew  more  than  all  of  them  put  together;  and,  as  they 
"were  authors  of  impious  things,  empty  declaimers,  of 
no  weight  whatever,  theological  abortions,  fountains  of 
error,"  he  thought  he  was  called  by  heaven  to  speak 
out  and  tell  mankind  it  needed  a  new  church,  that 
the  old  one  was  alien  to  the  world  and  must  be  de- 
stroyed, and  that  he,  the  "doctor  of  doctors,"  as  he 
called  himself,  alone  had  the  "doctrines  from  Heaven" 
which  all  henceforward  must  receive  from  his  mouth 
lest  they  "be  everlastingly  condemned." 

Luther  now  claimed  more  authority  than  any  Pope 
ever  did.  In  his  heart  he  knew  that  the  work  he  was 
undertaking  was  unwarranted,  unjustifiable  and  out- 
rageously sacrilegious.  But  the  spirit  of  rebellion 
against  constituted  authority,  especially  in  the  ecclesi- 
astical order,  took  possession  of  him  and  nothing  now 
would  stop  him  from  sounding  the  trumpet  of  battle 


142  The  Facts  About  Luther 

against  the  ancient  Church,  her  teaching  and  her  dis- 
cipHne.  To  escape  the  shame  of  his  atrocity,  he,  as 
deceptive  as  he  was  subtle,  began  his  work  of  destruc- 
tion by  minghng  with  the  crowds  to  win  disciples,  who 
were  only  too  glad  to  ''take  revenge  on  Christianity  for 
having  so  long  interrupted  the  pleasures  of  the 
world."  To  these  he  preached  rebellion  and  awoke 
that  chord  which  responded  in  the  heart  of  Eve  to 
the  tempter's  first  whisper :  ''Why  hath  God  com- 
manded you?"  Directing  his  shafts  against  the  force 
of  law,  to  give  zest  to  his  harangues,  he  spoke  not 
"those  things  that  are  right,"  as  Scripture  enjoins, 
but,  "pleasant  things,"  "errors"  such  as  the  populace 
who  long  to  be  deceived  glory  in,  and  hence,  knowing 
the  open  road  to  an  assured  popularity  and  fame,  he 
talked  loudly  and  boisterously  of  the  misdeeds,  more 
or  less  real,  of  some  of  the  members  of  the  Church 
and  of  certain  abuses  which  actually  had  crept  into 
the  Church. 

This  was  a  very  clever  and  cunning  way  to  inflame 
the  passions  of  the  lawless  and  the  wicked,  and  to 
divert  attention  from  his  own  heretical  teachings  and 
notoriously  scandalous  behavior.  During  all  this 
time  he  was  seemingly  unconscious  of  his  own  faults, 
which  sadly  needed  reformation  and  removal.  He, 
was,  however,  wide-awake  and  ever  on  the  lookout  for 
the  shortcomings  and  the  defects  of  the  brethren  in 
the  household  of  the  faith  in  order  to  use  these  as 
a  weapon  against  the  Church  and  thus  unfairly  place 
responsibility  where  it  did  not  belong.  He  seemed 
to  take  a  special  delight  in  keeping  his  nose  fixed  at 
the  leak  in  the  sewer  and  then  rudely  exposing  the 
evils  discovered  in  the  lives  of  some  whose  personal 
conduct  in  certain  directions  was  in  conflict  with  the 
lofty  and  elevated  teachings  they  professed.  The 
illustrious  deeds  and  the  holy  lives  of  the  milHons 
that  were  true  to  their  holy  calling  were  for  the 
moment  conveniently  forgotten  and  the  corruption  of 
the  few  that  followed  the  misuse  of  wealth  and 
power  he  emphasized  and  magnified  for  the  outcry  of 


Luther  ox  the  Church  and  the  Pope       143 

men  who  themselves  were  anything  but  "reformed 
in  the  newness  of  their  mind."  The  shortcomings 
of  some,  no  doubt,  presented  then  as  now  grievous 
stumbling  blocks  and  tended  to  disedify.  The  Founder 
of  the  Church  predicted  that  scandals  would  arise, 
but  at  the  same  time  He  was  careful  to  warn  all 
against  using  these  as  a  motive  for  disloyalty  and  a 
basis  for  disobedience  to  legitimate  authority.  We 
do  not  wish  to  deny  that  some  of  the  brethren, 
Luther  himself  for  instance,  were  not  always  careful 
to  exemplify  in  their  lives  the  salutary  morality  which 
the  Church  ever  and  constantly  preached  to  her  mem- 
bers. It  should  be  remembered,  however,  that  what- 
ever self-indulgence,  pride,  ambition,  and  political 
profligacy  existed  now  and  then,  were  all  traceable 
to  a  disregard  of  the  Church's  teachings  and  were  com- 
mitted in  violation  of  her  disciplinary  regulations.  The 
Church,  therefore,  could  not  rightly  be  held  respon- 
sible for  the  misdeeds  of  her  unfaithful  children. 
Whatever  abuses  existed  always  sprang  from  the 
personal  and  not  the  official  side  of  the  Church ; 
they  were  not  inherent  in  the  Church ;  and  did  not 
originate  in  her  essential  constitution,  nor  grow  out 
of  it.  It  is  only  gross  ignorance  or  malignity  that 
attempts  to  make  the  Church  responsible  for  the  mis- 
deeds and  indiscretions  of  her  unfaithful  and  de- 
generate members.  It  is  remarkable,  however,  that 
in  all  matters  of  doctrine  and  morals  not  one  among 
the  unfaithful  of  all  times  ever  directly  or  remotely 
set  himself  at  variance,  as  Luther  did,  with  the  teach- 
ings and  practices  of  historical  Christianity.  No  bad 
Catholic  before  his  day  attempted  to  set  up  so  false  a 
Christianity;  none  ever  so  tampered  with  the  original 
deposit  of  the  true  faith  ;  none  ever  dared  assail  the 
organization  which  God  had  established,  and  which  He 
commanded  all  to  obey  and  respect  if  they  desired 
eternal  life. 

When  Luther  discovered  that  he  could  not  frighten 
the  Head  of  the  Church,  intimidate  legitimate  author- 
ity, and  impose  his  special  brand  of  reform,  which 


144  The  Facts  About  Luther 

was  no  reform  at  all,  he  was  greatly  disappointed  and 
disturbed.  Chagrined  and  wounded  in  his  vanity,  he 
grew  litigious,  vengeful  and  abusive.  He  had  every 
opportunity  in  his  chosen  field,  had  he  so  willed,  to 
seek  out  and  minister  to  the  lost  and  wandering  sheep. 
Like  many  saintly  souls  in  every  age,  he  might  by 
preaching,  prayer  and  example  have  helped  towards 
that  reformation  of  abuses  which  the  Church  is  ever 
attempting  by  canons  of  discipline,  papal,  provin- 
cial, diocesan,  but  this  ministry  of  zeal  and  salva- 
tion, within  the  Church  and  not  out  of  it,  was  not  to 
his  liking.  What  he  wished  was  not  the  restoration 
of  the  lost  and  the  reformation  of  the  imperfect  whose 
abuses  he  criticised,  but  the  destruction  of  the  sheep- 
fold  established  by  the  One  Great  Shepherd  of  souls 
and  the  overthrow  of  His  successor's  supreme  author- 
ity. Little  aware  of  his  folly  and  carried  away  by 
an  uncontrollable  anger,  he  set  to  work  not  only  to 
divide  but  to  destroy  the  Kingdom  of  Christ  and  wreck 
the  Bark  of  Peter. 

The  special  weapons  he  used  in  his  opposition 
against  the  mystical  Body  of  Christ  and  its  represen- 
tative on  earth,  were  calumny,  abuse  and  misrepre- 
sentation. Though  the  Church  has  the  right  to  have 
said  of  her  nothing  but  what  is  true,  yet  Luther,  in 
order  to  advance  his  nefarious  scheme,  twisted  and 
altered  and  changed  her  well-known  doctrines,  which 
had  remained  intact  and  uncorrupted  for  centuries,  to 
deceive  the  unwary  masses  unable  to  discern  the 
malignant  poison  of  heresy.  Arrogating  to  himself 
more  authority  than  any  Pope  ever  did,  he  falsely 
alleged,  that  "the  Church  founded  by  Jesus  Christ 
was  corrupt  in  its  very  constitution ;  that  from  the 
temple  of  God  it  had  become  a  synagogue  of  Satan ; 
that  its  visible  head,  the  Pope,  was  Antichrist  and 
that  the  Papacy  must  be  destroyed."  He  contended 
in  a  pamphlet  that  the  Papacy  ''is  an  institution  of 
the  Devil;"  and  he  abused  all  Popes,  Bishops, 
Priests,  Monks,  and  Catholics  in  general,  in  the 
coarsest   and   most   brutal   manner.     Possessed   of   a 


Luther  ON  THE  Church  AND  THE  Pope        145 

satanical  hatred  of  all  authority,  save  what  he  claimetj 
for  himself,  he  imagined  that  the  Church  was  all 
wrong  and  should  be  cast  aside  as  a  human  inven- 
tion, despite  the  fact  that  her  Founder  was  Jesus 
Christ,  who  promised  the  assistance  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
to  protect  her  from  error  and  who  declared  He  would 
preserve  her  to  the  end  of  time  to  spread  the  glad 
tidings  of  redemption.  Disregarding  the  magnificenl 
unity  of  faith  which  reigned  during  centuries  before 
his  day,  the  result  not  of  ignorance  or  indifference, 
but  of  enlightened  science  and  spiritual  earnestness 
due  to  the  powerful  teachings  of  the  missionaries  and 
the  profound  expositions  of  the  Scholastic  theologians, 
he,  in  his  brazen  conceit,  thought  the  time  had  come 
**to  deliver  Europe  from  the  yoke  of  the  Popes  and 
the  superstitions  of  an  idolatrous  worship."  What  he 
thought  was  needed  in  his  day  were  his  ways  of  ex- 
plaining the  truths  and  maxims  of  the  Gospel,  and  his 
new  doctrines,  entirely  different  from  and  opposed  to 
those  which  were  taught  and  had  been  taught  through- 
out historical  Christianity.  Thus  his  avowed  object 
was  to  displace  the  Church  founded  for  all  time  by 
Jesus  Christ,  and,  in  her  stead  rear  up  a  new  Chris- 
tianity, form  a  new  Scripture,  prescribe  a  new  faith 
and  establish  a  new  worship,  something  never  dreamt 
of  or  recognized  before  his  day.  "The  Bible,"  he 
alleged,  ''furnished  the  necessary  instruction  and 
authority  for  such  an  undertaking,"  and  forthwith  he 
declared  that  it  and  it  alone,  left  to  the  caprice  of 
individuals  and  interpreted  without  the  traditional 
teaching  of  a  Church  Divinely  empowered  to  safe- 
guard and  explain  it,  was  the  sole  and  ultimate 
criterion  of  the  Christian's  faith.  'The  Bible  and 
nothing  but  the  Bible"  became  the  familiar  Prot- 
estant formula,  which,  as  history  tells,  wherever  it 
was  followed  out  in  practice,  invariably  resulted  in 
confusion  and  produced  as  many  religions  as  think- 
ers or  semi-thinkers  or  no  thinkers  at  all.  An  open 
Bible  cannot  render  and  never  will  render  man's  private 
judgment  infallible.    Freedom  of  interpretation  means 


146  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  destruction  of  all  sure  doctrine,  the  death- 
blow to  truth  handed  down,  the  tearing  asunder  of 
religious  union  and  the  beginning  of  endless  dissen- 
sions. 

The  life  work  Luther  now  proposed  to  himself  had 
for  its  object  the  ignoble  purpose  of  destroying  the 
Church,  disrupting  the  solidarity  of  united  Christian 
belief,  and  leaving  men  without  a  safe  guide  as  to  the 
verities  which  the  Almighty  wished  His  subjects  to 
know  and  the  worship  He  required.  The  reformer's 
genius,  if  we  may  dignify  his  spirit  of  destruction  by 
that  name,  ended  here.  The  Church,  which  in  her 
appointment  is  as  divine  as  the  creation  of  the  visible 
firmament  of  the  heavens,  he  would  not  have;  and 
yet  to  replace  it  or  offer  a  worthy  substitute,  even 
were  this  possible,  he  of  all  men  was  manifestly  in- 
competent. Ever  vacillating,  ambiguous,  contradict- 
ory, he  was  utterly  incapable  of  formulating  a  clear, 
well-defined,  unhesitating  system  of  belief  to  replace 
that  of  the  old  Divinely  established  Church.  It  was 
a  special  characteristic  of  him,  as  every  student  of  his 
life  knows,  to  deny  one  day  what  he  professed  the  day 
before.  At  one  moment  he  would  declare  the  Church 
infallible,  and,  the  next  he  would  say  it  is  fallible.  He 
urged  that  all  should  submit  to  the  Councils  of  the 
Church,  and  then  that  they  must  not.  He  maintained 
that  the  civil  government  had  power  over  the  min- 
isters of  religion,  and  then  denied  it.  He  admitted 
that  there  was  a  hell,  and  afterwards  questioned  its 
existence.  He  taught  that  the  sacraments  conferred 
grace,  and  advocated  the  contrary.  He  claimed  that 
there  were  seven  sacraments  and  then  reduced  them 
to  two,  increased  them  to  three,  and  finally  to  five.  He 
maintained  each  of  the  sacraments  and  denied  five  of 
them.  In  baptism  he  both  admitted  and  denied  that 
grace  was  conferred ;  and  taught  that  original  sin  was 
effaced  and  that  it  was  not.  He  maintained  that  there 
was  a  purgatory,  and  that  we  should  pray  for  the 
dead,  and  then  denied  it. 

These  are  only  a  few  specimens  of  Luther's  con- 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope   147 

stant  variation  in  teaching.  They  show  how  uncertain 
his  attitude  was  regarding  religious  truth,  and,  there- 
fore how  unfitted  he  was  for  the  deHcate  task  of 
framing  a  new  profession  of  faith  which  could  in 
any  sense  be  presented  and  maintained  before  an  ex- 
acting and  intelligent  world.  His  associates  in  rebel- 
lion recognized  this  uncertainty  and  often  called  at- 
tention to  his  lack  of  solid  foundation  in  religious  ex- 
position. Cochlaeus  says  :  "The  seven-headed  Luther 
everywhere  contradicts  himself  and  his  own  teaching." 
It  is,  moreover,  a  matter  of  history  that  when  the 
meeting  of  the  Diet  at  Augsburg  made  it  necessary 
for  the  Protestant  party  to  state  distinctly  its  faith, 
Luther  sinks  to  a  secondary  place.  All  knew  that  he 
was  as  unstable  as  water  and  could  not  be  trusted  to 
adhere  to  any  pronouncement  for  the  brief  space  of 
twenty-four  hours.  The  Augsburg  Confession,  which 
is  to  this  day  the  creed  of  the  Lutherans,  and  printed 
in  the  beginning  of  some  of  their  prayer  books,  is  not 
the  work  of  Luther.  It  was  drawn  up  by  Melanch- 
thon,  who  corresponded  with  Luther,  then  at  Coburg, 
but  did  not  adhere  to  his  views. 

Fair-minded  Protestant  authors  nave  all  along  ad- 
mitted the  woeful  vagueness,  inconsistency  and  per- 
petual contradictions  everywhere  noticeable  in  their 
hero's  pronouncements  on  religious  questions,  but, 
strange  to  say,  many  of  them  do  not  consider  his 
irreconcileable  differences  in  dealing  with  eternal  truth 
as  real  defects.  They  very  cleverly  but  deceitfully 
evade  the  real  issue  by  endeavoring  to  make  their 
readers  believe  that  his  aberrations  in  doctrinal  mat- 
ters only  show  forth  their  formulator's  wonderful 
intellectual  versatility,  vigor,  and  wealth.  These  writers 
have  eyes  and  see  not  that  the  contradictions  so 
noticeable  in  their  master's  pronouncements  on  all 
matters  religious  unfit  him  to  be  in  any  sense  a  reliable 
exponent  of  Eternal  Law  and  that  his  wild  and  reck- 
less inconsistency  in  presenting  his  new-fangled  ideas, 
opposed  entirely  to  all  Divine  ordinances,  disqualify 
him  as  a  religious  teacher  and  a  spiritual  guide  to 


148  The  Facts  About  Luther 

whom  any  one  could  with  safety  entrust  the  care  of 
his  salvation.  If  the  minds  of  such  writers  are  not 
warped  by  prejudice  they  should  realize  that  when 
Luther  set  himself  up  as  a  religious  leader  and  claimed 
a  divine  mission  to  teach  truth,  he  should  at  least 
have  been  clear-headed  enough  to  give  his  hearers  an 
exact,  definite,  and  consistent  answer  to  any  and  all 
the  vital  problems  affecting  the  interests  of  men's 
souls.  This  Luther  did  not  and  could  not  do.  He 
never  knew  for  a  moment  what  he  was  going  to 
teach  next.  He  despised  the  Church  with  her  deter- 
mined, fixed  and  unalterable  declaration  of  truth,  and, 
thus,  like  unto  "the  heathen  and  the  publican,"  his  per- 
ception of  divine  truth  became  obscured,  leaving  him 
and  all  who  were  ever  led  by  him,  like  ''children,"  as 
St.  Paul  says,  "tossed  to  and  fro  with  every  wind  of 
doctrine."  Eph.  IV,  14.  His  "wickedness,"  to  use 
the  word  of  St.  Paul  at  the  end  of  the  text  just  quoted 
to  describe  the  promoters  of  false  doctrine,  taught  men 
to  "dissolve  Jesus,"  deny  the  teachings  of  His  Gos- 
pel and  impose  an  impious  travesty  of  Christianity 
that  preaches  "Peace;  and  there  is  no  peace."  Look 
out  on  the  Christian  world  to-day  with  its  hundred 
and  more  warring  denominations,  and  behold  how  few 
of  the  original  articles  of  faith  have  survived  among 
the  disciples  and  followers  of  Luther. 

Luther's  advocates  might,  if  their  eyes  are  not 
filmed,  read  with  profit  the  following  words  which 
their  master  penned  when  he  had  genuine  misgivings 
at  the  outset  of  his  apostasy.  "How  many  times,"  he 
writes,  "have  I  not  asked  myself  with  bitterness  the 
same  question  which  the  Papists  put  me ;  Art  thou 
alone  wise?  Darest  thou  imagine  that  all  mankind 
have  been  in  error  for  so  long  a  series  of  years?  T 
am  not  so  bold  as  to  assert  that  I  have  been  guided 
in  this  affair  by  God.  How  will  it  be,  if,  after  all, 
it  is  thou  thyself  who  art  wrong  and  art  thou  in- 
volving in  thy  error  so  many  souls  who  will  then  be 
eternally  damned?"  Some  time  after  he  wrote  these 
words  and  reflected  that  "it  is  a  terrible  thing  and 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       149 

full  of  danger  to  lift  one's  voice  in  the  Church  of 
God,"  he  felt  that  he  ''could  heartily  wish  to  bury  all 
in  silence  and  pass  a  sponge  over  what  he  had  writ- 
ten," knowing  that  he  would  "have  to  render  an  ac- 
count to  God  for  every  heedless  word."  Compunction 
came  too  late.  In  spite  of  all  his  regrets  he  never 
had  the  courage  to  take  in  hand  "the  sponge"  he 
spoke  of  to  wipe  out  the  slanderous  scribblings  and 
wanton  perversions  of  truth  he  penned  against  the 
Church  of  God  and  her  infallible  Head.  He  went 
into  eternity  without  a  sign  of  repentance,  and  died 
as  he  had  lived,  blaspheming  the  Church  which  he 
had  misrepresented  and  abused,  but  which  he  could 
not  either  overthrow  or  destroy.  His  end  was  sad 
beyond  expression.  Would  it  not  be  well  whilst  there 
is  time,  for  all,  who  like  him,  revile,  hate,  and  mis- 
represent the  Church  and  her  doctrinal  virtues  and 
ethics,  to  carefully  ponder  over  their  master's  mis- 
take? The  monomania  of  opposing  the  Church  of 
Christ  and  decrying  her  authority  over  the  souls  of 
men  is  a  disease  that  all  afflicted  therewith  should 
rid  themselves  at  once  for  it  entails  ruin  for  time 
and  eternity. 

Luther  openly  and  unblushingly  maintained  that  the 
Church  founded  by  Jesus  Christ  had  fallen  into  error 
in  her  teachings  and  that  her  doctrines  needed  change. 
This  outrageous  calumny  has  been  assiduously  cir- 
culated time  and  time  again  since  its  formulator  first 
gave  it  to  the  world  and  thousands  upon  thousands 
have  been  only  too  ready  to  believe  it,  notwithstand- 
ing its  falseness,  untenableness  and,  what  is  worse, 
its  blasphemy  against  Christ  and  His  Church.  The 
noisy  talk  of  degenerate  demagogues  who  make  an 
easy  livelihood  by  spreading  discontent  among  audi- 
ences that  are  only  too  ready  to  listen  to  everything 
defamatory  of  the  Church  cannot,  however,  silence 
truth  or  prevent  the  fair-minded  and  intelligent  in 
the  community  from  searching  for  it  as  it  is  in  Christ 
Jesus  and  His  Church. 

On  a  little  reflection,   it  will  appear  plain   to  the 


160  The  Facts  About  Luther 

unbiased  mind  that  what  Luther  declared  concerning 
the  Church  could  not  be  substantiated  for  the  very 
good  and  solid  reason  that,  "if,"  as  Preston,  a  dis- 
tinguished convert  from  Episcopalianism,  says,  "the 
Church  had  erred  in  her  teaching  of  the  articles  of 
faith  confided  to  her  by  her  Divine  Founder,  then  there 
never  had  been  a  Church,  or  if  there  had  been  a 
Church,  it  had  not  been  the  Church  of  Christ.  The 
Church  of  Christ,  if  it  be  the  Church  of  Christ,  can- 
not err  in  matters  of  faith  and  morals,  for  the  moment 
it  errs,  it  is  no  longer  the  Church  of  Christ,  but  the 
Church  of  the  devil.  What  can  there  be  more  plain 
than  this?  That  cannot  be  called  the  Church  of 
Christ  which  teaches  error;  but  if  the  Church  of 
Christ  can  teach  error,  then  according  to  the  assump- 
tion, it  IS  the  Church  of  Christ  and  it  is  not  the 
Church  of  Christ  at  one  and  the  same  time.  It  is 
the  Church  of  Christ  because,  according  to  the  assump- 
tion of  the  moment,  it  is  so  called;  it  is  not  the 
Church  of  Christ,  because  it  teaches  falsehood,  and 
cannot,  therefore,  be  the  agent  of  God  in  any  sense. 
The  very  idea  of  a  Church  having  erred  in  faith  de- 
stroys it  root  and  branch,  and  leaves  nothing  what- 
ever behind  it.  Again,  this  theory  is  open  to  another 
consideration.  If  the  Church  erred,  then  Christ  broke 
His  word,  for  He  declared  that  it  should  not  err,  and 
he  said  to  Peter  on  whom  He  built  His  Church :  The 
gates  of  hell  shall  never  prevail  against  my  Church,' 
and  T  will  guide  it  into  all  truth.'  Now,  if  the 
Church  erred,  the  gates  of  hell  did  prevail  against 
the  Church  and  Christ  did  not  keep  His  promise. 
But  you  are  to  have  a  new  Church  and  Christ  is  to 
be  its  author.  But  Christ  has  broken  His  word,  ac- 
cording to  the  assumption  of  Luther  and  his  follow- 
ers and,  therefore,  is  not  worthy  of  confidence.  Then 
how  can  you  trust  Him  again?  And  yet  you  are  to 
believe,  in  one  and  the  same  mental  act,  that  Christ 
broke  His  word  and  is  not  worthy  of  confidence  and 
that  He  is  worthy  of  confidence  and  accept  a  new 
Christianity  at  His  hands.     Every  logical  mind  will 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       161 

easily  grasp  the  utter  inconsistency  of  such  theories 
as  these." 

Whatever  may  be  said,  it  is  evident  that  the  idea 
of  the  error  of  the  Church  in  matters  of  faith  and 
morals  is  suicidal  to  the  Church  itself.  "The  Church 
of  God,"  says  St.  Paul,  "is  the  pillar  and  the  ground 
of  truth."  It  holds  up  the  truth  to  the  nations  and 
on  it  the  truth  rests.  Now  break  it  down  and  where 
is  the  pillar  and  the  ground  of  truth?  So  when 
Luther  taught  that  the  Church  had  lapsed  into  error 
and  when  his  imitators  continue  his  wicked  work  by 
constructing  religious  organizations  which  they  know 
to  be  human  and  not  Divine,  the  work  of  man  and 
not  of  God,  each  and  all  contribute  their  share  in 
the  work  of  crippling,  dividing  and  destroying  the 
Church  Jesus  Christ  established  as  the  organ  of  His 
truth  for  all  time,  and,  then,  be  it  remembered,  when 
this  Church  passes  away  from  the  minds  of  men, 
then  will  be  obliterated  the  great  bulwark  of  truth, 
piety,  and  devotion.  Eminent  Protestants  all  along 
have  admitted  the  influence  of  the  Church  on  the 
nations'  morality  and  civilization.  "Withdraw  that  in- 
fluence," the  Rev.  Dr.  Boynton,  a  Congregational 
minister  of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  says,  "and  there  would 
be  Bedlam  within  a  month." 

The  Catholic  Church  has  always  claimed  Christ 
for  her  Founder  and  has  proved  her  Divine  mission 
and  her  unchangeable  teaching  to  the  world.  Eminent 
non-Catholic  divines  acknowledge  this.  From  a  vast 
number  we  select  the  late  Dr.  Briggs,  a  Protestant 
Episcopalian  theologian  of  New  York,  who  under- 
took to  answer  the  question,  'Who  or  what  is  a 
Catholic'  in  the  American  Journal  of  .Theology,  a 
periodical  connected  with  the  Chicago  University. 
"There  can  be  no  doubt,"  he  writes,  "that  at  the 
close  of  the  third  century  'Roman'  and  'Catholic'  were 
so  closely  allied  that  they  were  practically  identical. 
In  other  words,  connection  or  communion  with  the 
See  of  Rome  was  then,  as  now,  a  test  and  condition 
of  one's  Catholicity."     Dr.  Briggs  further  maintained 


152  The  Facts  About  Luther 

''that  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  of  our  day  is  the 
heir  by  unbroken  descent  of  the  CathoUc  Church  of 
the  second  century."  In  his  reading  of  early  Chris- 
tian literature  he  found  the  word  "Catholic,"  to  stand 
for  three  things:  (i)  The  vital  unity  oi  the  Church 
of  Christ;  (2)  the  geographical  unity  of  the  Church 
extending  throughout  the  world;  (3)  the  historical 
unity  of  the  Church  in  apostolic  tradition. 

Applying  these  tests  to  modern  conditions,  Dr. 
Briggs  finds:  ''Geographical  unity  has  been  lost  by 
the  Protestant  Churches,  by  the  Church  of  England 
more  than  any  other,  for  the  Church  of  England  is 
so  strictly  a  national  church  that  she  is  confined  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race.  She  has  not  only  no  communion 
with  the  Roman  Church,  but  she  has  also  no  corn- 
munion  with  the  sister  national  churches.  .  .  .If  we; 
(the  Episcopalians)  would  be  Catholic,  we  cannot* 
become  Catholic  by  merely  calling  ourselves  by  that  * ' 
name.  Unless  the  name  corresponds  with  the  thing, 
it  is  a  sham  and  a  shame." 

The  Catholic  Church,  then,  has  been  well  nigh  two 
thousand  years  in  this  world  of  change,  and  at  no 
age  of  her  eventful  history  has  her  teaching  been 
at  variance  with  that  of  her  Divine  Founder.  No 
reliable  historian  notes  that  after  the  death  of  the 
last  of  the  Apostles  a  single  change  or  increase  ever 
took  place  in  the  revelation  or  deposit  of  faith  con- 
fided to  the  Church's  keeping.  Men,  like  Luther, 
accuse  the  Church  of  variation  and,  some  like  Toc- 
hackert,  go  as  far  as  to  say  that  she  manufactured  new 
dogmas,  for  instance,  the  Immaculate  Conception  of 
the  Virgin  Mary  and  the  Infallibility  of  the  Pope. 
Needless  to  say  all  and  every  accusation  of  this  nature 
is  without  the  slightest  foundation.  To  charge  the 
Church  with  the  manufacture  of  new  dogmas  is  merely 
a  scheme  invented  by  designing  men  to  deceive  the 
unwary  and  prevent  them  from  searching  after  the 
truth.  The  idea  is  rooted  in  misconception,  bigotry, 
and  preiudice. 

The  Church  does  not  tolerate  and  never  has  in  all  . 


Luther  ON  THE  Church  AND  THE  Pope        153 

the  ages  of  her  existence  tolerated  novelty  or  new- 
ness of  doctrine.  She  very  wisely  admits  a  progress, 
an  amplification,  and  a  development  of  her  teaching 
for  the  fuller  and  better  understanding  and  compre- 
hension of  Divine  truth.  What  has  been  announced 
from  the  beginning  she  cannot  change  and  never  has 
changed ;  what  she  has  done  and  may  do  at  some 
future  time,  w^as,  under  the  strain  of  controversy, 
the  attacks  of  heresy  or  other  causes,  to  increase 
the  knowledge  of  the  people  regarding  the  fixed  doc- 
trines of  Christ  and  bring  out  in  clearer  light  and 
minuter  detail  the  belief  contained  in  the  original 
deposit  of  faith  handed  down  from  Apostolic  times. 
Dr.  Mausbach,  in  the  "Germania"  of  June  12,  1902, 
very  pertinently  observes :  "As  the  germs  of  truth 
that  lay  dormant  in  the  bosom  of  the  early  Church 
were,  like  the  grain  of  mustard-seed,  to  expand  later 
on  to  the  fullness  of  their  life  and  growth,  so  it  has 
come  to  pass  that  the  simple  and  germinal  elements 
of  Divine  truth  that  appeared  in  the  teachings  of  the 
apostles  have,  at  a  later  stage  of  the  development  of 
God's  kingdom,  been  more  fully  differentiated  and 
more  definitely  related.'* 

The  Church  has  never  assumed  the  right  to  for- 
mulate new  teachings,  manufacture  new  dogmas  and 
impose  new  doctrines.  She  has,  however,  the  right 
to  define  Divine  truth,  to  amplify  it,  and  give  it  new 
and  fuller  explanation  as  necessity  may  demand.  This 
right  she  exercises  when  she  makes  an  infallible  decla- 
ration concerning  a  dogma  which  Is  already  a  part 
of  the  original  deposit  of  belief.  These  definitions 
of  belief  are  not  to  be  construed  into  other  than 
formal  and  explicit  declarations  of  the  faith  she 
held  from  the  beginning.  A  new  form  of  creed  to 
safeguard  her  teaching  can  never  with  her  imply  a 
new  doctrine.  Progress  in  the  understanding  of  the 
faith  is  her  motto,  but  change  never.  This  view 
has  been  altogether  ignored  by  those  who  are  anxious 
to  charge  the  Church  with  making  a  change  in  her 
teaching,  but  all   scholars  worthy  of  the  name  are 


154  The  Facts  About  Luther 

agreed  that  she  has  been  all  along  and  is  to-day  in 
ail  doctrinal  pronouncements  exactly  in  accord  with 
the  truth  which  Christ  commissioned  her  to  deliver 
to  the  world.  Heresy  and  schism  there  have  been, 
but  a  mighty  defender  has  at  all  times  come  forward 
to  crush  the  head  of  error,  and  the  Church  has  gone 
steadily  on  with  her  God-given  mission  to  teach  all 
things  whatsoever  Christ  entrusted  to  her  keeping. 
Surely  there  can  be  none  so  illogical  as  to  deny  the 
force  of  tradition.  Yet  tradition  compels  the  admis- 
sion of  the  Church's  Apostolic  doctrine.  This  doc- 
trine came  by  the  blood  and  the  sacrifices  of  millions 
of  martyrs  to  Luther's  day,  and  it  has  remained  intact 
and  unchanged  ever  since  to  enlighten  the  minds  and 
comfort  the  souls  of  men. 

Bougaud  in  his  remarkable  work,  *T1  Cristianismo, 
etc.,"  pays  the  following  tribute  to  the  unchangeable 
character  of  the  Church's  teaching  as  embodied  and 
epitomized  in  the  Apostles'  Creed.  *'For  eighteen 
centuries,"  he  says,  ''it  has  subsisted,  not  hidden  away 
in  some  secret  part  of  a  temple,  not  rolled  up  in  a 
bundle  like  a  mummy,  but  thrown  on  the  highways 
of  hum^anity,,  sung  in  churches,  repeated  every  day  on 
the  lips  and  in  the  hearts  of  millions  and  millions  of 
mankind.  And  not  only  does  it  subsist  to  the  shame 
of  all  things  else,  which  are  fading  and  unstable,  but 
for  eighteen  centuries  it  has  had  to  bear  the  brunt 
of  the  most  formidable  intellectual  warfare  ever  seen. 
It  had  its  beginning  on  the  eve  of  Pentecost,  and  it 
has  not  yet  ceased.  And  as  the  sword  of  the  spirit 
is  the  miost  beautiful  to  be  found  in  the  world,  who 
can  tell  the  number  and  variety  of  attacks  made  against 
it  by  its  enemies.  Now  it  is  in  close  quarters  with 
the  subtleties  of  Greek  genius,  as  in  the  days  of  Arius, 
Nestorius,  and  Eutyches ;  now  it  meets  the  impetuous 
eloquence  of  a  time  both  trivial  and  sublime,  as  in 
the  epoch  of  Luther;  again  in  this  privileged  country 
of  the  globe  (France),  where  raillery  kills  with  pier- 
cing witticisms,  as  in  the  period  of  Voltaire,  or  even 
in  our  days  of  scientific  delirium,  with  the  astonish- 


Luther  ON  THE  Church  AND  THE  Pope       155 

ing  discoveries  of  science  not  rightly  understood. 
Behold,  for  eighteen  centuries  this  has  continued; 
eighteen  centuries  of  the  most  terrible  intellectual 
warfare,  maintained  by  the  most  choice  intelligences. 
Now,  what  has  been  the  effect  of  it?  Has  a  single 
line  of  the  symbol  been  cancelled?  No,  the  Creed 
subsists,  unchanged,  in  its  splendid  integrity.  It  is 
like  one  of  those  beautiful  obelisks  of  red  granite 
brought  from  Egypt  to  the  piazzas  of  Rome:  the 
storms  of  four  thousand  years  have  not  been  able  to 
break  a  fragment  off  them." 

It  is  an  incontrovertible  fact  that  there  is  sham, 
individualistic  religion  unfortunately  prevailing  widely 
to-day.  It  had  its  origin  in  the  rebellious  heart  of 
Martin  Luther,  the  father  of  the  Reformation.  There 
and  then  originated  the  great  gulf  that  divided  the 
ideals,  principles  and  ethics  of  the  religion  of  the  gentle 
Nazarene  from  the  individualistic  system  which  revived 
and  re-established  the  selfish  characteristics  of  Pagan- 
ism and  which  is  falsely  called  by  the  name  of  Chris- 
tianity to-day.  Without  right  or  sanction.  Protestant- 
ism has  promulgated  doctrines  unknown  and  unheard- 
of  for  sixteen  centuries  after  Christ  established  His 
Church.  No  wonder  that  many  Protestant  ministers 
to-d^y  complain  of  the  inconsistency  of  the  religion 
that  they  avow.  They  realize  that  the  terrible  break 
of  the  Reformation  opened  up  an  enormous  chasm 
which  divides  their  belief  from  that  which  Jesus  taught 
and  gave  His  Church  to  communicate  to  the  world. 
It  could  not  be  otherwise,  for  rebellion  in  matters 
spiritual,  as  often  in  things  material,  enervates,  dis- 
rupts, and  destroys.  Outside  the  Church  to-day  Pro- 
testant Biblical  scholars  have  gone  almost  completely 
and  hopelessly  away  from  the  traditional  Christ,  true 
God  and  true  man.  Dr.  Loofs,  a  non-Catholic  Profes- 
sor of  Oberlin  College,  Ohio,  considers  that  the  Ger- 
man Lutheran  scholars  are  past  the  day  of  battle  for 
the  Divinity  of  Christ,  for  among  many  the  belief  in 
the  very  Godhead  and  very  ^^lanhood  of  Jesus  Christ 
has  been  practically  given  up.     By  the  denial  of  the 


156  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Divinity  of  Christ,  they  strike  at  the  foundation  doc- 
trine of  the  Christian  religion,  and  then  the  whole 
fabric  of  revelation  falls  to  pieces.  The  denial  of  the 
Divinity  of  Christ  involves  the  denial  of  the  Divinity 
of  His  Church,  and  in  consequence  men  are  left  with- 
out a  Divine,  infallible  teacher  to  speak  in  God's  name 
and  with  His  authority. 

If  men  who  long  for  the  true  religion  of  Christ 
will  only  throw  off  the  veil  of  human  respect,  acknowl- 
edge their  error,  and  humbly  accept  what  Luther  re- 
jected, they  will  have  no  further  necessity  to  seek  for 
what  they  want,  for  the  Church,  One,  Holy,  CathoHc, 
and  Apostolic,  remains  to-day  to  speak  to  all  in  the 
name  and  by  the  authority  of  her  Divine  Founder, 
and  shall  remain  through  all  future  ages,  as  she  was 
from  the  beginning,  the  sure  fountain  and  arc  of 
salvation,  upholding  by  a  word  and  work  the  heavenly 
sanctions  of  law,  divine,  international,  social. 

This  Church  is  gradually  becoming  better  known 
and  fair-minded  men  are  coming  in  numbers  to  her 
defence.  One  of  these  is  the  Rev.  T.  B.  Thompson  of 
the  Plymouth  Congregational  Church,  Chicago.  In  a 
recent  sermon  he  said :  "It  must  be  admitted  in  all 
fairness  that  popular  ignorance,  superficial  knowledge, 
and  malicious  slander  have  in  many  instances  misrep- 
resented the  teachings  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
To  contemplate  her  history  is  to  admire  her.  Reforma- 
tion, wars,  empires  and  kingdoms  have  been  arrayed 
against  her.  After  all  these  centuries  she  stands  so 
strong  and  so  firmly  rooted  in  the  lives  of  millions 
that  she  commands  our  highest  respect.  As  an  illus- 
tration, she  is  the  most  splendid  the  world  has  ever 
seen.  Governments  have  arisen  and  gone  to  the  grave 
of  the  nations  since  her  advent.  Peoples  of  every 
tongue  have  worshipped  at  her  altars.  The  Roman 
Catholic  Church  has  stood  solid  for  law  and  order. 
Her  police  power  in  controlling  millions  untouched  by 
denominations  has  been  great.  When  she  speaks,  legis- 
lators, statesmen,  politicians  and  governments  stop  to 
listen,  often  to  obey.     In  the  realm  of  worship,  her 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       157 

ministry  has  been  of  the  highest.  In  employing  beads, 
statues,  pictures,  and  music  she  has  made  a  wise  and 
intelligent  use  of  symbolism.  Her  use  of  the  best  in 
music  and  painting  has  been  the  greatest  single  inspira- 
tion to  those  arts,  and  her  cathedrals  are  the  shrines  of 
all  pilgrims." 

Brother  Thompson  never  uttered  truer  words  than 
these.  May  the  light  spread  till  the  minds  of  all 
will  be  illuminated  with  the  glory  and  splendor  of 
the  truth  as  it  is  in  Christ  and  in  His  Church ! 

Luther  entertained  not  only  a  special  hatred  of  the 
Church,    but    also    a    life-long    spirit    of    antagonism 
towards  its  Supreme  Head,  the  Pope.     With  him  it 
mattered  not  that  the  Bible  defined  God's  Church  as 
*'the   pillar   and   the   ground   of   truth" ;   he   declared 
it  in  his  letter  to  Leo  X.  to  *'be  the  jaws  of  Hell, 
kept  wide  open  by  the  anger  of  God."     His  opposi- 
tion  toward   the   Head   of   the   Church   was    equally 
pronounced.     He  knew  that  the  Bible  names  Cephas 
the  "rock"  and  bids  him  ''confirm  the  brethren,"  yet 
he  dares  in  his  ''Comment  on  Galatians  V,  20,"  to  des- 
ignate the  Pope  as  "the  general  heresiarch  and  the 
head  of  all  heresies."    Thus  to  this  erratic  man,  noth- 
ing was  good  or  acceptable  that  came  out  of  Naza- 
reth.    When   the   Holy   See  and   its   Supreme   Ruler 
rose  up  before  his  mind,  as  they  did  constantly,  he 
was  aroused  to  frenzy  and  it  seemed  as  if  "his  heart 
was  changed  from  man's."     In  denying  the  position 
and  authority  of  the  Successor  of  St.  Peter,  his  lan- 
guage was   always   characteristically   vulgar,   abusive, 
and  insulting.     For  one  who  claimed  that  "his  mouth 
was  the  mouth  of  Jesus  Christ,"  we  are  astonished  at 
the  vocabulary  of  insult  and  rancorous  hate  he  con- 
stantly launched  against  the  Successor  of  St.   Peter. 
His  maniacal  ravings,  which  brushed  aside  the  plain 
fact  that  the  Holy  See  from  the  Apostles'  days  to  his 
own  had  been  recognized  by  the  whole  body  of  the 
faithful   as  the   Divinely  constituted   centre   of  unity 
and  truth,  were  especially  marked  in  his  work  ''The 
Papacy,  an  institution  of  the  DeviV  in  which,  "putting 


158  The  Facts  About  Luther 

on  cursing  like  a  garment/'  as  the  Psalmist  says,  he 
did  his  utmost  to  malign  and  insult  Catholics,  and  to 
abuse  and  deride  their  spiritual  chief.  Luther  lived 
under  the  reign  of  four  successive  popes,  and  he  knew 
as  well  as  any  man  of  his  day  that  not  one  of  these 
or  any  of  their  predecessors  ever  tampered  with  the 
faith  of  Jesus  Christ  and  did  not  deserve  to  be  desig- 
nated as  "heresiarchs."  Moreover,  to  call  the  Vicar  of 
Christ  by  the  name  of  ''Heresiarch,"  was  to  incur  the 
woe  pronounced  against  those  who  "put  darkness 
for  light  and  light  for  darkness."  Is.  V,  20.  But 
we  need  not  wonder  at  his  attitude.  No  one  becomes 
a  greater  enemy  to  God's  Church  than  he  who  has 
left  it;  none  reviles  the  amplitude  of  jurisdiction 
emanating  from  God  Himself  and  embodied  in  the 
Governor  of  all  the  Faithful,  more  than  he  who  has 
fallen  from  it.  ''Corruptio  optimi  pessima."  In  Luther 
we  have  a  flagrant  example  of  St.  Gregory's  terrible 
saying  about  bad  priests,  that  there  **are  no  men  from 
whom  our  Lord  receives  greater  injury." 

The  Reformer's  abuse  of  the  Head  of  the  Church 
reaches  its  height  in  this  frightful  book  published  in 
Wittenberg,  1545.  The  text  was  illustrated  by  his 
friend,  the  famous  painter  Lucas  Cranach,  who,  after 
the  author's  suggestions,  filled  it  with  a  number  of 
woodcuts  which  in  obscenity  and  vulgarity  have  never 
been  surpassed.  The  purpose  of  this  nasty  work  was 
to  ridicule  and  defame  the  Papal  office  in  the  eyes 
of  the  lower  classes.  The  following  description  of 
what  Luther  thought  of  "the  Pope  and  his  devil's 
kingdom"  is  furnished  by  Grisar  and  shows  to  what 
extremes  the  Reformer  went  to  ensure  the  success  of 
his  work  of  destruction  with  the  unthinking  and  vulgar 
rabble. 

"The  picture  with  tlie  Furies  to  which  Luther  refer., 
is  that  which  represents  the  'birth  and  origin  of  the 
Pope,'  as  the  Latin  superscription  describes  it.  Here 
is  depicted,  in  a  peculiarly  revolting  way,  what  Luther 
says  in  his  'Wider  das  Bapstum  vom  Teuffel  gestifft,' 
viz.,  the  Pope's  being  born  from  the  'devil's  behind.' 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       169 

The  devil-mother  is  portrayed  as  a  hideous  woman 
with  a  tail,  from  under  which  Pope  and  Cardinals  are 
emerging  head  foremost.  Of  the  Furies  one  is  suck- 
ling, another  carrying  and  the  third  rocking  the  cradle 
of  the  Papal  infant,  whom  the  draughtsman  every- 
where depicts  wearing  the  tiara.  These  are  the  Furies 
Megaera,  Alecto,  and  Tisiphone.' 

"Another  picture  shows  the  'Worship  of  the  Pope 
as  God  of  the  World.'  This,  too,  expresses  a  thought 
contained  in  the  'Wider  das  Bapstum,'  where  Luther 
says:  *We  may  also  with  a  safe  conscience  take  to 
the  closet  his  coat  of  arms  with  the  Papal  keys  and 
his  crown,  and  use  them  for  the  relief  of  nature/ 
As  a  matter  of  fact  in  this  picture  we  see  on  a  stool 
decorated  with  the  papal  insignia  a  crown  or  tiara  set 
upside  down  on  which  a  man-at-arms  is  seated  in 
the  action  of  easing  himself ;  a  second,  with  his 
breeches  undone,  prepares  to  do  the  same,  while  a 
third  who  has  already  done  so  is  adjusting  his  dress." 

"The  picture  with  the  title  The  Pope  gives  a  Coun- 
cil in  Germany'  shows  the  Pope  in  his  tira  riding  on 
a  sow  and  digging  his  spurs  into  her  sides.  The  sow 
is  Germany  which  is  obliged  to  submit  to  such  igno- 
minious treatment  from  the  Papists  ;  as  for  the  Council 
which  the  Pope  is  giving  to  the  German  people  it  is 
depicted  as  his  own,  the  Pope's,  excrement,  which  he 
holds  in  his  hand  pledging  the  Germans  in  it,  as  Luther 
says  in  the  passage  quoted  above.  The  Pope  blesses 
the  steaming  object  while  the  sow  noses  it  with  her 
snout.     Underneath  stands  the  ribald  verse: 

*Sow,  I  want  to  have  a  ride, 
Spur  you  well  on  either  side. 
Did  you  say  'Concilium'? 
Take  instead  my  'merdrum/ 

'Here  the  Pope's  feet  are  kissed,'  are  the  words 
over  another  picture,  and,  from  the  Pope  who  is 
seated  on  his  throne  with  the  Bull  of  Excommunica- 
tion in  his  hand,  two  men  are  seen   running  away, 


160  The  Facts  About  Luther 

showing  him,  as  KostHn  says,  'their  tongues  and  hinder 
parts  with  the  utmost  indecency.'  The  inscription  be- 
low runs: 

Tope,  don't  scare  us  so  with  your  ban ; 
Please  don't  be  so  angry  a  man; 
Or  else  we  shall  take  good  care 
To  show  you  the  *  Belvedere/ 

"Kostlin's  description  must  be  supplemented  by  add- 
ing that  the  two  men,  whose  faces  and  bared  pos- 
teriors are  turned  towards  the  Pope,  are  depicted  as 
emitting  wind  in  his  direction  in  the  shape  of  puffs 
of  smoke ;  from  the  Pope's  Bull  fire,  flames  and  stones 
are  bursting  forth." 

*'Of  the  remaining  woodcuts  one  reproduces  the 
scene  which  formed  the  title-page  to  the  first  edition 
of  the  "Wider  das  Bapstum,"  viz.,  the  gaping  jaws  of 
hell,  between  the  teeth  of  which  is  seen  the  Pope  sur- 
rounded by  a  cohort  of  devils,  some  of  whom  are 
crowning  hirn  with  the  tiara;  another  portrays  the 
famous  Pope-Ass,  said  to  have  been  cast  up  by  the 
Tiber  near  Rome;  it  shows  ''what  God  Himself  thinks 
of  Popery,"  yet  another  depicts  a  pet  idea  of  Luther's 
viz.,  the  "regard  of  the  Tapa  satanissimus'  and  his 
cardinals,"  i.e.,  their  being  hanged,  while  their  tongues, 
which  had  been  torn  out  by  the  root,  are  nailed  fast 
to  the  gallows.  "How  the  Pope  teaches  faith  and 
theology" ;  here  the  Pope  is  shown  as  a  robed  donkey 
sitting  upright  on  a  throne  and  playing  the  bagpipes 
with  the  help  of  his  hoofs.  "How  the  Pope  thanks 
the  Emperors  for  their  boundless  favors"  introduces 
a  scene  where  Clement  IV.  with  his  own  hand  strikes 
off  the  head  of  Conradin.  "How  the  Pope,  following 
Peter's  example,  honors  the  King"  is  the  title  of  a 
woodcut  where  a  Pope  (probably  Alexander  HL)  sets 
his  foot  on  the  neck  of  the  Emperor  (Frederick  Bar- 
barossa  at  Venice).  It  is  not  necessary  to  waste 
words  on  the  notorious  falsehoods  embodied  in  the 
last  two  pictures.    Luther,  moreover,  further  embe!- 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       161 

lished  the  accounts  he  found,  for  not  even  the  bit- 
terest antagonist  of  the  Papacy  had  ever  dared  to 
accuse  Clement  IV.  of  having  slain  with  his  own 
hand  the  last  of  the  Staufens.  Among  the  ignorant 
masses  to  whom  these  pictures  and  verses  were  in- 
tended to  appeal,  there  were,  nevertheless,  many  who 
were  prepared  to  accept  such  tales  as  true  on  the 
word  of  one  known  as  the  "man  of  God,"  the  "Evan- 
gelist, the  new  Elias  and  the  Prophet  of  Germany.'* 
"In  the  "Historien  des  ehrwirdigen  in  Gott  seligen 
thewren  Mannes  Gottes,"  Mathesius  says  of  Luther: 
"In  the  year  1545  he  brought  out  the  mighty,  earnest 
book  against  the  Papacy  founded  by  the  devil  and 
maintained  and  bolstered  up  by  lying  signs ;  and,  in 
the  same  year,  also  caused  many  scathing  pictures  to 
be  struck  off  in  which  he  portrayed  for  the  benefit 
of  those  unable  to  read,  the  true  nature  and  monstros- 
ity of  Antichrist,  just  as  the  Spirit  of  God  in  the 
Apocalypse  of  St.  John  depicted  the  red  bride  of 
Babylon,  or  as  Master  John  Huss  summed  up  his 
teaching  in  pictures  for  the  people  of  the  Lord  Christ 
and  of  Antichrist."  "The  Holy  Ghost  is  well  able 
to  be  severe  and  cutting,"  says  Mathesius  of  this 
book  and  the  caricatures.  "God  is  a  jealous  God  and 
a  burning  fire,  and  those  who  are  driven  and  in- 
flamed by  His  Spirit  to  wage  a  ghostly  warfare 
against  the  foes  of  God  show  themselves  worthy  foe- 
men  of  those  who  withstand  their  Lord  and  Saviour." 
Mathesius,  like  many  others,  was  full  of  admiration 
for  the  work."     (Grisar.  Vol.  V.,  pp.,  423,  4.  5.) 

Thus  the  first  biographer  of  Luther  shows  his  taste 
for  the  filthy  and  disgusting  in  his  appreciation  of  one 
of  the  vilest  and  nastiest  books  that  eve>  disgraced 
the  pen  of  the  Ecclesiastes  of  Wittenburg  or  of  any 
other  man  before  or  since.  Unlike  Mathesius,  decent 
men  would  consider  it  a  less  odious  task  to  wade 
through  sewage  than  go  through  the  pages  of  this 
horrible  book  and  its  indecent  engravings.  It  is  with 
the  greatest  reluctance  we  refer  to  such  an  astound- 
ing production,  but  no  account  of  Luther  would  be 


163  The  Facts  About  Luther 

complete  without  reference  to  this  book,  which  should 
never  have  been  printed,  for  its  filthy  language  and 
indecent  illustrations  show  its  author  to  have  been 
anything, but  a  "dear  man  of  God,"  as  his  friends  love 
to  call  him.  DolHnger  when  speaking  of  this  book 
said  'It  must  have  been  written  under  the  influence 
of  intoxicating  drink,  or  of  fury  of  mind  bordering  on 
madness."  This  celebrated  writer  had  good  grounds 
for  the  criticism  he  makes,  for  Hospinian,  one  of  the 
contemporary  reformers,  declared  Luther  to  be  "abso- 
lutely mad" ;  and  men  like  Agricola  and  Catharinus. 
who  knew  the  reformer,  openly  referred  to  his  well 
known  drinking  habits,  which  at  times  approached 
intemperance,  if  not  actual  drunkenness. 

In  spite  of  all  that  Luther  said  and  wrote  against 
the  Papacy,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  nineteen  hun- 
dred years  ago  and  more,  Jesus  Christ,  as  foretold  by 
the  Prophets,  was  pleased  to  appear  in  this  world 
to  uplift,  enlighten  and  save  mankind.  In  the  Divine 
plan  of  redemption,  He,  who  was  full  of  grace,  life 
and  power,  v/as  not  to  remain  here  below  forever 
and  continue  in  person  the  instruction  and  guidance 
of  mankind  in  the  way  of  eternal  life.  He  is  no  longer 
visible  on  earth,  but  before  He  returned  whence  He 
came.  He  was  mindful  to  organize,  found  and  endow 
v/ith  perpetuity  an  hierarchical  Church,  which  He 
made  the  depository  of  His  teachings  and  which  He 
empowered  to  instruct,  govern,  and  act  in  His  name. 
This  Church  was  to  witness  for  Him  until  the  con- 
summation of  the  world  and  her  mission  was  to  bring 
His  doctrine.  His  worship,  and  His  ministry  down 
through  the  ages  to  all  peoples  and  to  all  nations.  In 
this  system  of  Divinely  guaranteed  authority,  which 
Christ  established,  the  Master  mercifully  provided  a 
safe  asylum  for  the  perpetuity,  preservation  and  protec- 
tion of  His  Divine,  saving,  and  ennobling  teachings. 
Before  ascending  into  heaven  Christ  was  pleased  to 
appoint  a  head  over  His  Society  and  to  be  Vicariously 
represented  on  earth  in  the  person  of  the  Sovereign 
Pontiff,  in  whom  the  Church  recognizes  the  most  ex- 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       163 

alted  degree  of  dignity,  the  full  amplitude  of  juris- 
diction, and  a  power  based  on  no  human  constitu- 
tions however  venerable,  but  emanating  from  the 
Saviour  Himself.  As  the  true  and  legitimate  Vicar 
of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Pope  presides  over  the  Universal 
Church.  He  is  the  Father  and  Governor  in  mat- 
ters spiritual  of  all  the  Faithful,  of  bishops  and  of 
all  prelates,  be  their  station,  rank  or  power  what  they 
may.  As  the  Church  is  never  to  perish,  the  rock  on 
which  it  is  built  is  never  to  perish  and  that  rock  is  the 
Papal  Spiritual  Sovereignty.  As  the  son  of  a  king 
inherits  the  rights  of  his  father,  so  each  successor 
in  the  lineage  of  the  spiritual  children  of  Peter  re- 
ceives from  Jesus  Christ  that  high  sovereignty  and 
jurisdiction  needed  to  rule  and  guide  the  Church  for 
all  time.  "To  thee  I  give  the  keys  of  the  Kingdom 
of  Heaven,  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt  bind  upon 
earth  shall  be  bound  also  in  heaven,  and  whatsoever 
thou  shalt  loose  on  earth,  it  shall  be  loosed  also  in 
heaven."  Matt.  XVI,  19.  And  the  Church,  which  is 
to  endure  to  the  end  of  time,  is  built  upon  a  rock  that 
can  never  perish.  "Thou  art  Peter  and  upon  this  rock 
I  will  build  my  Church,  and  the  gates  of  hell  shall 
not  prevail  against  it."    Matt.  XVI,  18. 

Thus,  the  Papal  Spiritual  Sovereignty  possesses 
three  great  distinguishing  prerogatives :  first.  It  is  the 
rock  upon  which  the  impregnable  Church  is  built ;  the 
crested  billows  may  rise  in  storm  and  foam  but  they 
break  harmless  at  its  feet ;  second,  The  Supreme  Pon- 
tiff holds  the  keys ;  he  makes  the  decrees  to  be  obeyed 
on  earth,  and  ratified  in  heaven ;  third.  He  feeds  with 
sound  doctrine  the  lambs  and  sheep  of  the  Church 
of  God  over  which  he  rules.  What  the  other  Apos- 
tles received,  Peter,  the  Pontifif  of  the  Apostles,  re- 
ceived in  fullness  and  supremacy.  "Where  Peter  is, 
there  is  the  Church,"  says  St.  Ambrose.  "Do  you 
want  to  know  who  is  the  faithful  Christian ;  ask  him 
is  he  in  communion  with  Peter's  successor?" 

The  Pope,  then,  is  the  mouth  of  the  Church. 
Through  him  speaks  the  mystic  body  of  Christ.  When, 


164  The  Facts  About  Luther 

acting  as  the  Supreme  Pontiff  of  the  Universal  Church, 
he  proclaims  to  the  world  doctrine  or  decision  on 
faith  or  morals,  he  is  infallible.  The  infallibility 
of  St.  Peter's  Chair  ever  endures  by  virtue  of  Our 
Lord's  prayer,  *T  have  prayed  for  thee,  that  thy  faith 
fail  not  and  thou  being  once  converted,  confirm  thy 
brethren."     Luke  XXII,  32. 

There  is  hardly  a  teaching  of  the  Catholic  Church 
that  has  been  so  grievously  misrepresented  by  those 
who  profess  to  be  enlightened  ministers  of  the  Gos- 
pel, and  so  strangely  misapprehended  by  our  separated 
brethren,  as  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope.  Non-Catho- 
lics have  been  taught  and  many  of  them  labor  under 
the  impression  that  Papal  Infallibility  is  a  new  doc- 
trine of  the  Church,  that  it  imparts  to  the  Pope  the 
extraordinary  gift  of  inspiration,  makes  him  impec- 
cable, confers  the  right  to  trespass  on  civil  authority, 
and,  even  to  play  fast  and  loose  with  the  Command- 
ments of  God.  These  and  other  equally  ridiculous 
conceptions  are  presented  in  the  most  plausible  and 
spicy  manner  to  a  gullible  public,  ever  ready  to  swal- 
low without  a  qualm  any  statement,  no  matter  how 
preposterous,  provided  it  reviles  and  injures  the 
Church  of  the  living  God.  The  promoters  of  the  cam- 
paign of  misrepresentation  are  jealous  of  the  Pope's 
authority,  and,  like  the  father  of  Protestantism,  resort 
to  every  means,  no  matter  how  unfair,  to  throw  ob- 
stacles in  the  way  to  keep  people  from  entering  the 
one  sheepfold  of  the  One  great  Shepherd  of  Souls. 
If,  however,  such  a  thing  as  Church  unity  could  be 
effected  among  themselves  and  their  hundred  and  more 
warring  religious  organizations,  we  imagine  it  would 
be  no  time  before  Protestantism  would  attempt  to  have 
a  Pope  of  its  own. 

All  who  are  anxious  to  know  what  Papal  Infalli- 
bility really  means  are  advised  to  consult  the  decrees 
of  the  Vatican  Council  held  on  July  18,  1870,  over 
which  Pius  IX.  presided,  surrounded  by  nearly  700 
bishops  gathered  together  from,  all  over  the  world,  rep- 
resenting more  than  30  nations  and  more  than  250,- 


Luther  ON  THE  Church  AND  THE  Pope   165 

000,000  Christians.  In  that  general  Council,  the  twen- 
tieth held  by  the  Church,  it  was  solemnly  and  offi- 
cially defined  that  Catholics  are  bound  to  believe  that 
the  Pope  is  infallible  only  when  he  speaks  ex  cathedra, 
that  is,  from  the  chair  of  Peter,  i,  in  discharge  of  his 
office  as  supreme  teacher  of  the  Universal  Church;  2, 
by  virtue  of  his  supreme  Apostolic  authority;  3,  de- 
fining a  doctrine,  giving  an  absolutely  final  decision 
regarding  faith  or  morals ;  4,  addressing  the  Universal 
Church;  5,  binding  her  to  hold  the  doctrine  he  so 
defines. 

When  this  doctrine  is  rightly  understood,  it  means, 
to  put  it  briefly,  that  God  will  keep  the  Pope  from 
teaching  error  and  falsehood,,  in  faith  or  morals,  when 
he  acts  as  head  of  the  Universal  Church.  The  power 
of  the  Pope  then  is  far  from  being,  as  so  many  sup- 
pose, arbitrary,  absolute,  and  despotic.  It  is  rightly 
limited  in  many  respects  and  there  is  nothing  in  it 
to  disturb  or  make  any  one  think  that  the  Pontift  is 
at  liberty  to  change  the  Scriptures,  to  alter  the  Divine 
law  or  impose  doctrines  not  contained  in  the  original 
revelation  completed  by  Christ  in  the  beginning  of  the 
Church.  Acting  in  his  private  capacity,  as  a  temporal 
sovereign  or  as  Bishop  of  the  diocese  of  Rome,  the 
Pope,  having  free-will  and  being  human,  can  err  in 
morals  or  in  judgment.  He  is  not  impeccable  and  it 
is  false  to  allege  that  he  claims  to  be.  He  cannot  make 
right  wrong  or  v/rong  right.  His  authority  like  the 
Kingdom  of  Christ,  is  "not  of  this  world."  His  juris- 
diction belongs  to  spiritual  matters,  and  is  always  for 
good,  for  truth,  for  the  cause  of  Christ,  for  the  welfare 
of  souls,  for  the  promotion  of  religion. 

It  is  silly,  then,  in  the  highest  degree  of  silliness, 
to  be  alarmed  at  the  teaching  of  the  Catholic  Church 
on  Papal  Infallibility,  and  allege  that  this  doctrine  puts 
one's  intellect  and  conscience  in  a  state  of  thraldom 
and  servitude.  The  privilege  enjoyed  by  the  Pope 
cannot  be  exercised  arbitrarily.  It  is  used  only  after 
study  and  prayer  and  regard  for  the  welfare  of  the 
Universal  Church,  and  then  it  must  fulfill  all  the  five 


166  The  Facts  About  Luther 

conditions  already  enumerated  and  demanded  by  the 
dogma,  as  defined  by  the  Vatican  Council.  Then  Papal 
decisions  in  faith  and  morals  are  so  guided  by  Divine 
Providence,  according  to  Christ's  own  promise,  as 
ever  to  be  infallibly  true ;  and,  to  the  farthest  extremi- 
ties of  the  world  every  faithful  Christian  admits  in 
his  heart  what  every  loyal  son  of  the  Church  obeys  in 
his  act.  It  is  not  the  man,  remember,  that  is  infalli- 
ble, it  is  Jesus  Christ;  and  Jesus  Christ  determines 
what  that  man,  who  holds  the  keys,  shall  teach  when 
"he  feeds  the  lambs  and  sheep"  of  his  Master.  Far 
then  from  arousing  opposition,  the  doctrine  of  Papal 
Infallibility,  which  is  the  keystone  in  the  arch  of 
Catholic  faith,  and  which  has  preserved  her  marvel- 
ous unity  of  belief  throughout  the  world  from  the 
beginning,  ought  to  command  the  unqualified  admira- 
tion of  every  reflecting  mind. 

The  Papacy  for  well  nigh  two  thousand  years  has 
been  in  this  world  where  all  things  disappear,  and 
never  has  a  century  passed  in  which  the  Popes  have  not 
conferred  innumerable  benefits  on  mankind.  They  en- 
abled their  followers  to  save  the  Christian  religion 
when  the  wild  pagans  broke  through  the  Roman  army 
and  swept  down  on  Rome,  laying  waste  with  fire  and 
sword  to  the  utter  destruction  of  everything  holy, 
ennobling,  and  uplifting.  No  other  organization  could 
have  met  these  savage  peoples  save  that  one  organiza- 
tion, the  Catholic  Church.  Without  the  Popes  there 
would  be  no  Christianity  in  the  world  to-day,  for 
there  would  be  neither  authority,  nor  infallibility,  nor 
unity.  And  could  there  be  law  without  authority,  reve- 
lation without  certainty,  in  the  midst  of  a  society 
without  unity?  Every  organization  that  accomplishes 
anything  must  have  a  dominant  head,  and  even  the 
United  States,  as  great  as  she  is  to-day,  would  not 
last  three  months  without  a  supreme  ruler.  Some 
complain  that  infallibility  fetters  the  human  mind,  but 
they  should  remember  that  this  infallibility  regards 
subjects  which  the  human  mind  unaided  would  never 
have  discovered,  or  if  discovered,  could  never  without 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope   16'<' 

infallibility,  have  trusted  and  reposed  upon.  Without 
infallibility  what  thoughtful  man  could  honestly  de- 
clare his  unhesitating  and  lasting  conviction  in  an 
accurately  worded  profession  of  faith,  declaring  his 
hopes  for  the  future  and  the  means  appointed  by  God 
whereby  he  may  secure  that  future? 

But  the  world  is  inconsistent.  It  is  ever  wearying 
of  those  who  would  serve  it.  It  mistrusts  its  truest 
friends.  It  persecutes  those  who  would  help  it.  Jeru- 
salem crucified  Jesus  Christ.  The  rulers  imprisoned 
St.  Peter  in  the  midst  of  that  city  where  his  shadow 
had  healed  the  sick  and  his  words  strengthened 
the  withered  limbs.  All  his  successors  for  the  first 
three  hundred  years  sealed  their  profession  of  the 
faith  with  their  own  blood.  Thenceforward  every 
Pope  desired  to  pursue  his  heavenly  mission  in  peace 
and  quiet,  but  enemies  of  the  Church  arose  to  strike 
at  the  chief  shepherd  in  the  hope  of  involving  the 
whole  flock.  The  boldest  and  most  daring  of  these 
was  Martin  Luther,  who  aimed  to  place  himself  on  an 
equality  with  the  Pope  and  to  impose  his  personal 
views  for  the  acceptance  of  mankind.  During  a  long 
period  of  his  life,  according  to  his  own  testimony  given 
in  the  Preface  to  his  Works,  he  was  so  besotted  with 
the  Papacy  that  "he  would  have  killed  or  helped  to 
kill  any  one  who  rejected  one  iota  of  the  Pope's 
teaching."  But  ambition  and  rebellious  thoughts,  after 
some  time,  agitated  his  mind,  and  growing  restless, 
discontented,  and  dissatisfied  in  all  his  earlier  faith 
taught  him  to  venerate,  he  yielded  to  the  temptation 
"to  make,"  as  he  says  in  a  letter  to  the  Augustinians 
of  Wittenburg,  "a  stand  alone  against  the  Pope  and 
hold  him  forth  as  Antichrist."  Well  might  he  write 
to  the  priest  Leitzken :  "Pray  for  me,  for  I  grow  more 
miserable  every  day.  I  am  constantly  drawing  nearer 
to  hell."  The  pleadings  of  grace  in  his  soul  were 
hushed  and  in  a  spirit  of  self-confidence  never  mani- 
fested by  any  one  before  his  day,  he  finally  brought 
himself  as  Alzog  says,  "to  indulge  the  pleasing  delu- 
sion that  he  himself  was  John  the  Evangelist,  ban- 


168  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ished  by  Domitian  to  the  island  of  Patmos :  a  second 
Paul  or  Isaias."  Pride  and  ''the  prosperity  of  fools" 
led  him  on  to  destruction,  and  he  who  once  wrote 
to  Pope  Leo  X.,  *'I  acknowledge  your  voice  as  that 
of  Christ  who  presides  and  speaks  in  you,"  turned 
in  rankest  hypocrisy  and  supreme  effrontery  to  make 
out  "that  the  Sovereign  Pontiff  was  not  the  chief  head 
of  all  Christendom,"  that  "the  time  had  come  to  cease 
to  be  the  puppets  of  the  Roman  Pontiff,"  and  that 
**the  Papacy  should  be  destroyed." 

Leo  X.,  like  all  his  predecessors,  who  ever  showed 
a  paternal  love  and  an  affectionate  compassion  for  the 
wayward,  labored  to  bring  Luther  to  a  realization  of 
his  sad  condition,  but  to  no  purpose.  He  would  no 
longer  acknowledge  the  voice  of  the  shepherd  of 
the  whole  flock  "as  that  of  Christ"  and  this  ingrate 
and  lawless  one,  reckless  in  calumny,  groundless  in 
assertion,  with  the  cursing  and  bitterness  and  deceit 
that  filled  his  m.outh,  went  throughout  the  land  "deter- 
mined," as  he  said,  "to  crush  the  Papacy"  and  bury 
it  "under  the  weight  of  his  thunders  and  lightnings." 
He  was  the  first  in  all  Christendom  to  raise  the  cry 
"No  Popery."  Why?  Because  he  wanted  no  author- 
ity in  religion  save  his  own. 

In  the  spirit  of  an  apostate,  he  was  now  prepared 
to  go  to  any  lengths  to  vent  his  irrational  hatred  of 
the  Holy  See,  the  impregnable  citadel  of  the  com- 
munion of  the  true  children  of  God.  For  nearly 
twenty  years,  he  occupied  himself  in  pouring  forth  a 
whole  series  of  denunciations  and  insults  against  di- 
vine, ecclesiastical  authority.  Plis  virulence  and  rage 
against  the  Holy  See  and  its  respected  representative 
was  so  bitter  and  intense  that  "he  could  not"  as  we 
read  in  Hazlitt's  Michelet,  pp.  229-230,  "pray  without 
intermingling  maledictions  with  his  orisons.  "If,"  he 
says,  "I  exclaim :  Hallowed  be  Thy  Name,  I  am,  as  it 
were  constrained  to  add :  Cursed  be  the  name  of 
Papists  and  of  those  who  blaspheme  against  Thee.  If  I 
say :  Thy  Kingdom  Come,  I  must  put  in :  Cursed  be 
the  Papacy,  and  all  the  other  kingdoms  which  are 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       169 

opposed  to  Thine.  If  I  pray :  Thy  will  be  done,  I 
rejoin:  Cursed  be  the  Papacy  and  may  their  designs 
be  overthrown  who  oppose  Thy  commands."  The  in- 
tensity of  his  bitterness  towards  the  Head  of  the 
Church  was  especially  manifested  on  leaving  the  Coun- 
cil of  Schmalkalden,  when  he  made  the  sign  of  the 
cross  over  the  assembled  crowds  and  cried  out:  "May 
the  Lord  fill  you  with  hatred  of  the  Pope." 

Carried  away  by  his  wild  aspirations  for  dominance 
he  was  convinced  that  he  was  to  outlast  the  Papacy. 
In  his  insanity,  he  forgot,  however,  that  the  chair  of 
Peter  was  like  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant.  No  Uzzah 
ever  touched  it  irreverently  and  remained  unscathed. 
The  keen-sighted  Voltaire,  another  apostate,  very  aptly 
expressed  this  historic  truth  in  the  famous  saying: 
*TIe  who  eats  Pope,  dies  of  it."  The  Cynic  of  Ferney 
read  in  the  world's  annals  a  truth  to  which  Luther 
remained  blind.  "He  remained  blind  to  it,"  as  Ander- 
don  says,  "because  the  evil  passions  to  which  he  sur- 
rendered himself,  his  jealousy,  his  arrogance,  and 
obstinate  wrong-headedness  and  lust  of  dominion,  and 
sensual  downward  tendencies,  had  caused  the  light 
that  was  in  him  to  become  darkness." 

The  keynote  of  his  whole  movement  of  Reforma- 
tion is  sounded  in  the  Latin  line  he  wrote  on  a  piece 
of  plaster  at  a  banquet,  "where  the  Princes  enter- 
tained him  magnificently  and  regaled  him  with  the 
finest  Rhenish  wine,"  and  where,  as  Seckendorf  tells, 
"he  drank  like  a  true  German" : 

'Testis  eram  vivus,  moriens  tua  mors  ero  Papa." 
"Living  I  was  your  pest;  dying,  O   Pope,  I  shall 
be  your  death." 

The  merry  guests,  delighted  with  his  humor,  sat 
down,  and  Luther  "continued  to  vent  his  wit  in  sar- 
casms against  his  natural  enemies,  the  pope,  the  em- 
peror, the  monks,  and  also  the  devil,  whom  he  did 
not  forget,  to  the  delight  of  the  frivolous  and  bibulous 
company."  As  the  boisterous  and  irreverent  crowd 
rose  from  the  table,  a  report  of  the  death  of  Paul  HI. 
reached  them.     Luther,  delighted  at  the  news,  cried 


170  The  Facts  About  Luther 

out,  exultingly,  'This  is  the  fourth  Pope  I  have  buried: 
I  shall  bury  many  more  of  them."  He  that  dwelleth 
in  heaven,  however,  laughed  at  the  prediction.  Luther 
was  taken  suddenly  ill  and  in  spite  of  all  the  atten- 
tion of  his  assembled  guests  in  a  few  hours  he  was 
called  to  the  judgment  seat  of  God  to  render  an  ac- 
count of  his  long  and  bitter  opposition  to  the  Church 
and  its  legitimate  representative.  "He  ate  Pope  and 
died  of  it.'' 

Meanwhile,  the  Papacy,  of  which  Luther  was  to 
be  the  death  and  to  see  the  end,  what  became  of  it? 
Let  Lord  Macaulay  give  answer.  ''The  Papacy,"  he 
says,  "remains :  not  in  decay,  not  a  mere  antique,  but 
full  of  life  and  youthful  vigor.  The  Catholic  Church 
is  still  sending  forth  to  the  farthest  ends  of  the  world 
missionaries  as  zealous  as  those  who  landed  in  Kent 
with  Augustine:  and  still  confronting  hostile  kings  in 
the  same  spirit  with  which  she  confronted  Attila.  The 
number  of  her  children  is  greater  than  in  any  former 
age.  The  acquisitions  in  the  new  world  have  more 
than  compensated  her  for  what  she  has  lost  in  the 
old.  Her  spiritual  ascendency  extends  over  the  vast 
countries  which  lie  between  the  plains  of  Missouri  and 
Cape  Horn ;  countries  which  a  century  hence,  may  not 
improbably  contain  a  population  as  large  as  that  which 
now  inhabits  Europe.  Nor  do  we  see  any  signs  which 
indicate  that  the  term  of  her  long  duration  is  approach- 
ing. She  saw  the  commencement  of  all  the  govern- 
ments and  of  all  the  ecclesiastical  establishments  that 
now  exist  in  the  world ;  and  we  feel  no  assurance  that 
she  is  not  destined  to  see  the  end  of  them  all."  (Macau- 
lay,  "Essay  on  Ranke's  History  of  the  Popes.") 

Such  is  the  estimate  of  a  man  whose  prejudices  were 
all  against  the  Church  of  God.  His  common  sense 
and  acquaintance  with  facts,  however,  compelled  him 
to  laud  her  services  and  predict  her  perpetuity.  Since 
his  day  hundreds  upon  hundreds,  whose  views  of  his- 
tory were  often  distorted  by  prejudice,  have  admitted 
in  all  fairness  that  popular  ignorance,  superficial 
knowledge  and  malicious  slander  have  in  many  in- 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       lYl 

stances  misrepresented  the  teachings  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  contemplating  her  marvelous  career,  her 
triumphs  over  wars,  empires  and  kingdoms  arrayed 
against  her  and  her  firm,  consistent  and  persevering 
stand  for  law  and  order,  have  declared  that  she  is  the 
most  splendid  institution  the  world  has  ever  seen.  They 
came  to  recognize  that  never  has  a  century  passed 
without  the  Popes  conferring  innumerable  benefits  on 
mankind,  that  they  have  literally  been  the  civilizers 
and  the  evangelizers  of  the  world,  that  during  many 
centuries  they  denounced  slavery  and  finally  suppressed 
it,  that  they  guarded  the  sanctity  of  marriage,  en- 
couraged learning  and  the  arts,  and  that  they  alone 
have  been  able  to  make  a  periodical  and  lengthened 
peace  between  contending  nations  in  Europe.  These 
disinterested  witnesses  could  not  in  fairness  withhold 
the  meed  of  praise  so  justly  due  the  Papacy  for  its 
eminent  and  distinguished  services  to  mankind.  In- 
deed, mercy,  justice  and  charity  have  ever  flourished 
according  to  the  extent  of  the  Papal  influence. 

A  belief  in  the  Lord  and  His  teaching  and  respect 
for  His  representative  on  earth,  has  ever  been  the  real 
magnet  that  draws  and  holds  the  splendid  loyalty  of 
the  Catholic  people.  Catholics  know  that  their  Church 
is  the  true  Church  of  Christ,  that  it  is  international 
in  character,  that  its  comforting  worship  is  the  same 
for  all  throughout  the  universe,  and  that  its  head 
stands  as  an  authority  Divinely  guaranteed  in  all  mat- 
ters that  pertain  to  faith  and  morals.  They  realize 
that  Divine  truth  which  was  given  for  the  universal 
benefit  of  mankind,  could  not  be  left  without  protec- 
tion and  was  never  intended  to  be  a  mere  plaything 
in  the  hands  of  fallible  men.  They  know  that  their 
religion  antedates  all  man-made  forms  of  belief  and 
they  can  tell  when,  where,  and  by  whom  all  the  vari- 
ous religious  denominations  originated.  They  know 
that  outside  of  God's  own  guarantee  and  everlasting 
endowment  truth  cannot  be  found,  that  other  Chris- 
tian churches  cannot  consistently  claim  succession  from 
Christ  Himself,  and,  therefore,  their  teaching  is  not 


172  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  Christ-founded  or  guaranteed  creed,  and  their 
religion,  cannot  be  as  good,  as  true,  as  the  religion  of 
the  Church  founded  by  Jesus  Christ  Himself.  With 
Catholics  one  religion  is  not  as  good  as  another.  Truth 
cannot  possibly  admit  error,  and  since  perfect  truth 
prevails  with  God  alone,  then  in  God's  own  Church 
only  can  the  perfect  truth  be  found.  One  religion 
would  be  as  good  as  another  if  all  religions  were  es- 
tablished by  men.  The  Catholic  religion  was  estab- 
lished by  Christ  Himself  and  as  He  was  God  and 
perfection  itself,  it  is  impossible  to  improve  on  His 
word  or  work.  With  Catholics  the  one  religion  is  that 
of  the  Church  founded  by  Christ,  the  Holy  Catholic 
Apostolic  Church,  of  which  Peter,  the  Fisherman,  was 
the  first  Bishop  at  Rome.  The  line  of  his  successors 
is  unbroken  down  to  the  present  ruler  of  the  Holy 
See.  Thus  they  are  aware  of  the  certainty  of  their 
position,  and  they  are  confident  that  as  their  Church 
came  by  the  blood  and  sacrifice  of  millions  of  martyrs, 
and  remained  ever  since  to  execute  her  heavenly  mis- 
sion, she  will  endure  to  the  end  despite  the  protest  and 
opposition  of  the  malicious  who  vilify  and  misrepresent 
her.  The  Catholic  Church  has  stood  adamant  for 
nearly  two  thousand  years  and  no  efforts  of  a  lot  of 
spiritual  degenerates  like  Luther,  Calvin,  Zwingle  and 
company,  will  ever  prevail  against  her. 

This  certainty  of  belief,  as  well  as  the  solace  and 
peace  found  in  the  Catholic  Church  under  the  head- 
ship of  Peter's  successors,  was  never  offered  by 
Luther  to  his  followers  in  revolt  or  given  by  any  of 
the  various  denominations  that  imitated  their  master 
in  his  rebellious  course.  The  principle  on  which  Luther 
started  his  new  religion  destroyed  entirely  in  its  very 
inception  the  possibility  of  any  certainty  of  Christian 
creed  and  faith.  The  right  of  every  individual  to  in- 
terpret the  Scripture  and  judge  for  himself  in  all 
matters  of  religion  was  ruinous  and  destined  to  fail- 
ure. *Tn  theory,  private  judgment,"  as  Preston  says, 
"destroys  both  the  creed  and  the  possibility  of  faith. 
There  can  be  no  creed  where  each  individual  is  the 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       173 

maker  of  his  own  faith.  There  can  be  no  unity  of 
faith  where  all  matters  of  belief  are  referred  to  the 
individual  judgment.  One  man  is  as  good  as  an- 
other in  finding  out  his  faith  and  in  interpretating 
Scripture,  or  tradition,  or  history;  and  more  than 
that,  this  private  judgment  is  not  simply  his  privilege 
but  it  is  his  duty.  All  are  bound,  even  the  ignorant 
and  unlettered,  to  decide  for  themselves  when  there 
is  no  Divine  authority  and  Divine  witness,  and  thus 
you  have  as  many  creeds  as  there  are  individuals." 

"Then,  the  principle  of  private  judgment  destroys 
the  possibility  of  faith ;  for  where  there  is  no  external 
authority  there  can  be  no  exercise  of  faith,  for,  be  it 
remembered,  faith  is  the  belief  in  that  which  God 
delivers  to  man.  Now  if  God  does  not  speak  to  the 
individual,  he  cannot  exercise  faith ;  and  surely,  no 
one  is  vain  enough  to  say  that  his  own  judgment  is 
to  him  a  Divine  testimony.  What  each  individual  can 
prove  on  his  own  judgment  is  his  own  opinion  and 
his  individual  conception  stands  for  what  it  is  worth. 
But,  as  for  the  voice  of  God,  men  must  hear  it  from 
an  external  and  an  infallible  authority  before  they 
can  believe,  for  to  believe  is  not  to  entertain  an  opin- 
ion, nor  to  know  some  truth  by  induction  or  logic, 
nor  to  search  it  out  by  science,  but  it  is  to  believe  it 
and  receive  it  because  God  declares  it  to  be  so,  and 
because,  as  the  Soverei.s^n  Truth,  He  neither  can  de- 
ceive nor  be  deceived.  On  the  private  judgment  theory 
of  Luther  there  is  no  possibility  of  an  external 
testimony." 

Friedrich  Paulsen,  a  non-Catholic  writer,  says  :  "The 
principle  of  1521,  viz.,  to  allow  no  authority  on  earth 
to  dictate  the  terms  of  faith,  is  anarchical ;  with  it  no 
Church  can  exist.  .  .  .The  starting-point  and  the  justi- 
fication of  the  whole  Reformation  consisted  in  the 
complete  rejection  of  all  human  authority  in  matters 
of  faith.  .  .  .If,  however,  a  Church  is  to  exist,  then  the 
individual  must  subordinate  himself  and  his  belief  to 
the  body  as  a  whole.  To  do  this  is  his  duty,  for  re- 
ligion can  only  exist  in  a  body,  i.e.,  in  a  Church." 


l'J'4  The  Facts  About  Luther 

"Revolution  is  the  term  by  which  the  Reformation 
should  be  described.  .  .Luther's  work  was  no  Reforma- 
tion, no  're-forming'  of  the  existing  Church  by  means 
of  her  own  institutions,  but  the  destruction  of  the  old 
shape,  in  fact,  the  fundamental  negation  of  any  Church 
at  all.  He  refused  to  admit  any  earthly  authority  in 
matters  of  faith,  and  regarding  morals  his  position 
was  practically  the  same;  he  left  the  matter  entirely 
to  the  individual  conscience.  .  .  .Never  has  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  existence  of  any  ecclesiastical  authority 
whatsoever  been  more  rudely  denied." 

Wherever  Luther's  cardinal  principle  of  private  judg- 
ment has  been  carried  out  in  practice  it  has  invariably 
resulted  in  the  destruction  of  the  unity  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith  and  even  of  faith  itself.  Look  at  the  con- 
dition of  Christendom  since  this  man  first  advocated 
the  right  of  every  individual  to  judge  for  himiself  in 
matters  of  religion.  At  the  period  of  his  revolt  there 
was,  with  the  exception  of  the  Greek  schism,  only  one 
faith  in  which  all  who  called  themselves  Christians 
united.  Now,  if  you  look  out  beyond  the  pale  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  where  can  you  find  a  semblance  of 
unity,  even  in  matters  that  might  be  called  funda- 
mental? And  who  among  fallible  men  has  the  right 
to  declare  which  are  fundamental  and  which  are  not 
fundamental  articles?  Surely  on  every  side  are  the 
variations  of  Protestantism.  Its  adherents,  like  its 
formulator,  have  contradicted  themselves  over  and 
over  again ;  pulpit  stands  against  pulpit,  and  individual 
against  individual,  and  sect  against  sect,  and  even  in 
the  same  denomination  there  is  not  unity  of  faith. 
There  is  not,  we  believe,  a  single  Protestant  church 
in  the  whole  world  where  the  members  of  one  single 
congregation  are  solidly  united  together  in  the  unity 
of  one  certain  faith.  So,  if  facts  count  for  anything, 
they  proclaim  the  utter  confusion  which  has  resulted 
from  Luther's  effort  to  destroy  the  authority  of  the 
Church  and  the  headship  of  the  Pope.  Even  the  Bible, 
called  ''the  religion  of  Protestants,"  but  which  must 
be  believed  either  on  the  authority  of  the  Catholic 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       176 

Church  or  on  no  authority  at  all,  has  suffered  at  their 
hands ;  it  has  been  torn  into  pieces ;  its  supernatural 
character  has  been  interpreted  away  and  some  or  all 
of  it  has  been  filched  of  inspiration.  Some  Books  are 
received  and  some  are  not  received.  In  many  churches 
large  portions  of  the  Sacred  Record  are  treated  as  the 
father  of  the  Reformation  gave  example  in  his  day. 

The  great  trouble  with  the  Protestant  belief  all 
along  has  been  its  elasticity.  In  our  day  we  count  its 
denominations  by  the  hundreds.  On  almost  every 
street  corner,  we  face  a  church  of  a  different  per- 
suasion, such  as  Lutheran,  Episcopalian,  Presbyterian, 
Methodist,  Universalist,  Latter  Day  Saints,  etc.,  etc. 
The  Protestant  people  are  at  constant  variance  with 
one  another.  They  may  for  a  time  hold  to  the  tenets 
and  dogmas  of  the  parent  body  from  which  they 
spring,  but  ever  and  anon,  dissensions  arise,  and  after 
a  time  the  factions  separate  and  announce  a  doctrine  of 
their  own  and  acknowledge  no  allegiance  to  any  other 
sect  or  creed.  If  you  doubt  this,  just  investigate  the 
discipline  and  the  authority  of  any  of  the  Protestant 
beliefs  and  you  will  at  once  discover  the  truth  of  the 
statement.  And,  yet,  Protestants  wonder  at  the  steady 
and  alarmving  decrease  in  their  ranks  and  the  conse- 
quent tendency  of  the  day  to  abandon  all  religious 
profession.  The  reason  is  clear.  They  lack  the  great 
essential,  unity  of  faith  ;  they  lack  the  dominant  author- 
ity to  satisfy  their  follov/ers  in  the  belief  of  the  Di- 
vinity of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  true  Church,  and,  as  a 
result,  their  belief  ceases  to  appeal  to  them  and  they 
withdraw  from  active  church  participation. 

It  is  astonishing  how  common  it  is  nowadays  to 
meet  people,  who  sa}^  they  were  brought  up  Luth- 
erans, Baptists,  Methodists,  or  Presbyterians,  but  de- 
clare they  no  longer  have  any  definite  belief.  They 
were  taught  that  religion  is  a  purely  personal  matter 
which  each  individual  is  competent  to  decide  for  him- 
self, and  in  consequence  they  grow  careless  towards 
religious  questions  and,  losing  the  sense  of  a  posi- 
tive obligation  to  God  to  seek  the  truth  as   it  is  in 


176  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Christ  Jesus  and  His  Church,  they  turn  away  from 
their  original  creeds  to  join  the  ranks  of  the  indif- 
ferent, the  free-thinking,  and  the  unbeHeving.  AH 
Protestant  denominations  ahke  have  been  hit  by  these 
desertions.  In  this  country  alone,  we  face  the  appal- 
ling fact  that  out  of  nearly  a  hundred  million  people, 
there  are  fully  sixty  million  who  profess  no  religion 
whatever.  This  condition  is  sad  beyond  expression 
and  should  be  the  deep  concern  of  every  citizen  having 
a  love  of  his  fellow-man  and  the  stability  of  the  Con- 
stitution at  heart,  for  so  surely  as  Christianity  lessens 
in  the  estimation  of  our  countrymen,  just  so  surely 
will  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  on  which  it  is  founded 
disappear  and  lawlessness  and  anarchy  reign.  It  should 
be  remembered  that  Christianity  does  infinitely  more 
than  any  other  agency  to  preserve  law  and  order  and 
to  bring  contentment  into  the  lives  of  the  people. 

Luther  separated  Christianity  from  the  old  and  solid 
foundations  upon  which  it  rested  and  shutting  it  up 
within  the  covers  of  the  Bible  he  changed  the  Chris- 
tian church  into  a  veritable  "Pandemonium  where  all 
dreams,  all  half  truths,  and  all  errors,  disported  them- 
selves at  ease  and  celebrated  their  Sabbath."  As  he 
rejected  with  indignation  all  historical  and  traditional 
data  in  matters  of  faith  and  thereby  kicked  away  the 
foundations  of  all  fixed,  solid  and  enlightened  belief, 
there  was  nothing  left  for  his  followers  but  deism, 
naturalism,  indifferentisrn  or  contempt  of  all  revealed 
religion.  He  ventured  to  match  his  intellect  against 
the  Infinite  Intellect  and  the  result  was  confusion  and 
desolation.  Church  statistics  point  to  the  fact  that 
his  revolutionary  work  has  been  all  along  and  is  now, 
with  its  multitudinous  divisions  of  opinions  and  doc- 
trines, a  lamentable  failure. 

When  Charles  V.  saw  and  heard  Luther  at  the 
Diet  of  Worms,  he  said,  "That  man  would  never  make 
me  a  Protestant."  He  was  right  and  thousands  upon 
thousands  had  cause  enough  to  reach  a  similar  con- 
clusion. The  Icrv^rs  of  novelty,  however,  the  scoflFers, 
the  indifferent  and  a  large  number  of  the  ruling  sover- 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       177 

eigns  who  had  their  axes  to  grind,  were  not  as  keen 
in  their  judgment  of  the  heresiarch  as  the  loyal  and 
faithful  children  of  Holy  Church  and  they  easily  be- 
came victims  of  the  monster  of  impertinence,  folly, 
and  pride.  The  weak,  dissolute,  and  rebellious  of  the 
day  were  ready  to  embark  on  the  ways  of  innovation. 
For  years  the  ranks  of  those  who  were  captivated  by 
Luther's  absurdities  and  held  in  intellectual  slavery  by 
his  abominable  errors  increased  to  an  alarming  extent 
and  made  giant  headway,  to  the  detriment  of  the  true 
faith  throughout  the  land.  God,  however,  was  with 
His  Church  and  would  not  suffer  the  rebellious  to 
triumph. 

Towards  the  year  1555,  there  came  an  amazing 
change,  brought  about  by  a  great  revival  of  religious 
life  within  the  Church.  Rapidly  as  Protestantism  had 
spread  in  the  beginning,  its  repulse  was  equally  swift. 
While  the  apostate  friar  was  raving  against  Rome 
over  his  beer  in  the  Black  Eagle  Tavern,  where  he 
spent  most  of  his  evenings  amid  his  dissolute  dis- 
ciples, and  slanderously  charging  **the  Pope  and  his 
crew,"  as  he  sarcastically  designated  them,  ''with 
hatred  and  dread  of  the  very  word,  Reformation," 
the  Council  of  Trent  had  met  to  restore  to  the  purity 
and  grave  moral  character  of  the  ancient  discipline 
and  Church  government  whatever  in  the  lives  of  clergy 
and  people  was  contrary  to  that  spirit  and  discipline; 
and  also  to  renew  and  restate  with  great  precision  and 
detail  the  doctrines  which  came  down  from  the  Apos- 
tles in  order  to  oppose  them  to  the  errors  and  the  in- 
novations of  the  period.  Thus  Rome  showed  to  the 
world  that  reformation  is  the  very  life  of  the  Church. 
The  voice  of  her  chief  Pastor  now  resounds  through- 
out the  Christian  world  and  the  stray  sheep  wearied, 
emaciated  unto  spiritual  death,  deceived  by  the  false 
promises  of  liberty  and  emancipation  which  the  hire- 
ling could  not  fulfill,  return  in  humility  and  penitence 
to  be  nourished  and  fed  as  of  old  in  the  rich  pasture 
of  sound  doctrine  and  of  moral  rectitude  provided 
in  the  one  sheep  fold  of  the  One  great  Shepherd  of 


178  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Souls.  Luther's  pre-eminence  as  the  leader  of  a 
party  of  malcontents  waned.  Time  showed  him  to 
be  a  deceiver,  and  the  thoughtful  who  studied  his 
revolutionary  purpose,  analyzed  his  wicked  pronounce- 
ments and  witnessed  his  scandalous  behavior,  con- 
cluded they  were  neither  economically,  socially  nor 
spiritually  as  well  off  as  before  the  Lutheran  brand 
of  Reformation  was  proclaimed,  and  went  back  in 
masses  to  the  faith  which  in  an  evil  moment  they  had 
abandoned.  In  the  short  interval  of  a  decade,  from 
1555  to  1565,  the  Lutheran  cause  lost  enormously,  and 
ever  since,  as  history  and  experience  attest,  it  has 
gradually  gone  the  way  of  all  things  human. 

The  revival  of  Catholicity  at  this  period  is  one  of 
the  marvels  of  history  and  the  position  it  gained  in 
those  years  has  never  since  been  lost.  The  Church, 
ever  true  to  her  sublime  mission,  redoubled  her  efforts 
in  behalf  of  souls.  Imbued  with  renewed  vigor, 
she  went  out  everywhere  to  remind  the  unfaithful  of 
the  misery  and  desolation  of  apostasy  from  God  and 
the  Christian  faith,  with  the  result  that  thousands 
upon  thousands  hearkened  to  her  appeals  and  sub- 
mitted to  her  Divine  authority  and  saving  influence. 
The  conversion  movement  advanced  wdth  giant  strides. 
Coming  down  to  our  own  day,  it  is  growing  stead- 
ily as  men  realize  more  and  more  how  their  fore- 
fathers were  robbed  of  the  faith  by  Luther,  and 
apprehend  that  there  is  no  logical  middle  ground  be- 
tween the  Catholic  faith  and  the  purely  agnostic  phil- 
osophy of  which  Protestantism  is  the  parent.  In  Ger- 
many conversions  are  numerous  and  the  population,  by 
virtue  of  a  superior  birth-rate,  is  steadily  shifting 
towards  a  larger  Catholic  parentage,  so  much  so  that 
even  non-Catholic  writers  admit  that  in  less  than  a 
century  the  Fatherland  will  have  a  preponderance  of 
Catholics.  In  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales  conver- 
sions average  eight  thousand  a  year.  In  the  United 
States  they  run  close  to  forty  thousand  a  year.  The 
movements  now  going  on  in  the  Church  of  England, 
in  the  Episcopal  Church  of  America,  and  in  other 


Luther  ON  THE  Church  AND  THE  Pope       179 

denominations  clamoring  for  unity  will  inevitably  lead 
many  more  into  the  ranks  of  the  one,  true  Church 
established  by  Jesus  Christ. 

In  the  past  the  Catholic  Church  has  achieved  vic- 
tories in  the  face  of  the  world's  greatest  opposition 
and  she  will  continue  to  achieve  victories  until  the 
whole  Christian  world  will  be  Catholic.  Her  mission 
is  to  realize  the  prayer  of  her  Founder  that  there  shall 
be  One  Faith,  One  Fold,  One  Shepherd.  She  desires 
all  who  as  yet  do  not  believe  in  Christ  to  become  Chris- 
tians and  enter  into  communion  with  the  one  Church 
which  Christ  established,  in  order  to  glorify  God  by 
the  universal  acceptance  of  the  institution  founded  by 
His  Divine  Son  and  to  convert,  sanctify,  and  save 
souls.  Her  aim  is  to  prepare  men  for  Heaven,  to 
bring  them  to  a  knowledge  of  God,  the  love  and  serv- 
ice of  Christ  and  the  practice  of  virtue,  to  administer 
to  them  grace-giving  sacraments  and  to  offer  up  the 
adorable  sacrifice  of  the  Mass  for  their  benefit.  Out- 
side the  sphere  of  faith,  morals  and  discipline,  she 
has  no  desire  and  makes  no  claims  to  enter,  no  matter 
what  stories  her  enemies  may  circulate  to  her  detri- 
ment. She  knows  her  business  too  well  to  dabble  in 
things  that  lie  outside  of  the  object  for  which  she 
was  established,  and  hence  in  all  matters  which  are 
purely  temporal,  purely  political,  purely  secular,  she 
neither  claims  nor  exercises  jurisdiction.  Her  author- 
ity relates  to  religion  only,  and  hence  all  who  go  about 
telling  the  people  that  the  object  of  the  Church  in 
her  desire  to  advance  Catholicity  is  to  enrich  her 
treasur}^  and  to  see  her  head,  the  Pope,  king  or  emperor 
or  supreme  civil  potentate  of  the  universe,  are  only 
helping  the  devil  to  deceive  the  ignorant,  foment  strife, 
and  perpetuate  the  grossest  of  calumnies.  These 
maligners  of  the  Church  and  the  Papacy  who  fatten  on 
deception  are  like  their  father  Beelzebub,  ''liars  and 
the  truth  is  not  in  them." 

The  bigoted  disturbers  in  our  midst  may  decry  the 
fact  that  every  Catholic  the  world  over  recognizes 
the  Pope  as  the  supreme  head  and  final  judge  of  mat- 


180  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ters  religious,  but  they  should  understand  that  this 
loyalty  is  based  on  the  knowledge  that  the  Catholic 
Church  is  the  true  church  of  Christ  and  the  only  one 
that    makes   the    word    "Catholic"    mean    what    it   is 
intended  to  mean.     By   close  observation,   they  will 
discover   that   the    Pope's   power   and   authority   are 
modest  indeed,  w^hen  contrasted  with  that  of  many 
of  the  sovereigns  of  the  day  who  are  not  satisfied 
with  the  mere  temporal  rule  of  their  respective  coun- 
tries, but  claim  also  supreme  spiritual  dominion  over 
their   subjects.      Is   it  not  a   fact  that  the   King  of 
England   is   the   recognized   head   of   the   Church   in 
that  land  and  that  this  Church  is  the  fountain  head 
of   the    American    denomination?     Is    it   not   a    fact 
that  the  Czar  of  Russia  is  the  head  of  the  Russian 
Orthodox    Church    and    that    Russians    acknowledge 
him  as   supreme  in   matters   spiritual?     Is   it   not  a 
fact  that  the  Emperor  of  Germany  is  the  head  of  the 
Prussian  Lutheran  Church  and  that  all  Lutherans  in 
Prussia  recognize  the  Kaiser  as  their  spiritual  chief? 
What  have  the  bigots  to  say  to  this?     Can  they  dis- 
prove these  facts  that  are  patent  to  every  one  who 
runs  ?    Do  they  ever  allude  to  these  conditions  in  their 
harangues  against  the  Catholic  Church  and  her  legiti- 
mate representative?  Do  they  ever  charge  the  Eng- 
lishman, the  Russian,  or  the  Prussian  in  America  with 
disloyalty  to  the  Stars  and  Stripes  because  in  the  pro- 
fession of  their  respective  creeds  they  manifest  alle- 
giance in  spiritual  matters  to  foreign  potentates?   Do 
they  ever  tell  their  deluded  audiences  that  Luther  and 
his  followers  were  the  framers  of  the  principle  that 
created   the  State  Church?     Do  they  ever  tell  that 
the  so-called  reformers  held  that  kings  rule  by  divine 
right,  that  they  were  autocrats,  and  therefore,  could 
do   as   they   willed   in   things    spiritual   as   in   things 
temporal?    Do  they  ever  tell  how  Luther  flattered  the 
princes   till  they  became  the   aides   of  his   religious 
movement?    Do  they  ever  tell  that  Luther  was  a  con- 
summate politician  willing  to  sacrifice  any  principle 
for  political  expediency?    Do  they  ever  tell,  when  he 


Luther  on  the  Church  and  the  Pope       181 

foresaw  that  his  innovations  were  sure  to  lead  to  civil 
war,  how  he  openly  and  boldly  proclaimed  the  right 
and  duty  of  armed  resistance  in  the  cause  of  his  new 
doctrines?  Do  they  ever  tell  that  he  was  the  very  one 
to  urge  the  secular  power  to  repress  Catholicity  as  a  re- 
bellion, that  he  labored  to  excite  the  populace  to  resort 
to  arms  to  spread  his  reformed  doctrines  and  impose 
them  by  force  on  an  unwilling  community?  Do  they 
ever  tell  how  the  secular  supremacy,  advocated  by  the 
leaders  of  the  reform  movement,  became  unlimited  in 
its  claims  and  more  arrogant  in  its  assumptions  than 
the  Byzantine  despotism  of  the  Lower  Empire? 

To  these  burning  questions  the  bigots  give  no  an- 
swer, for  the  reason  that  they  know  as  little  about 
these  matters  as  they  do  about  the  Church  and  her 
respected  head,  whom  they  imagine  they  are  especially 
called  on,  like  their  Master  Luther,  to  denounce,  oppose 
and  persecute.  A  course  of  solid  reading  might  help 
them  to  dispel  their  malice  and  correct  their  igno- 
rance. Investigation  will  show  them  one  thing  at  least — 
that  all  who  live  in  glass  houses  should  be  mindful 
not  to  throw  stones  at  their  neighbors.  In  the  mean- 
time, we  advise  the  bigots  who  claim  a  monopoly  of 
patriotism  to  possess  their  souls  in  peace  and  to  rest 
assured  that  the  Catholic  Church  will  never  adopt,  but 
always  will  oppose  the  principle  which  Luther  fathered 
and  gave  to  his  religion,  namely,  the  subservience  of 
the  Church  to  State  domination. 

Of  one  thing  we  may  all  be  certain,  that  come 
what  will,  the  Catholic  religion,  which  is  not  and  does 
not  aspire  to  become  a  state  religion,  shall  remain  for 
all  time  in  all  her  truthfulness,  beauty  and  strength, 
because  she  is  the  one  universal  religion  established 
by  God  to  endure  to  the  consummation  of  the  world; 
and  that,  moreover,  when  the  chronicles  of  this  crea- 
tion close,  in  its  last  page  shall  be  recorded  the  per- 
petuity and  endurance  of  the  Roman  Pontiff.  Do 
not  forget  that  amidst  the  terrors  of  the  world's  clos- 
ing scenes,  one  voice,  ever  gentle,  constant,  pctient, 
hopeful,  shall  travel  around  the  earth,  bringing  peace 


182  The  Facts  About  Luther 

to  every  Christian  heart;  it  will  be  the  voice  of  the 
last  Pope  for  the  last  time  blessing  the  world.  Then 
and  then  only  will  the  Church  militant  cease  her  exist- 
ence on  earth  and  pass  to  the  glory  of  the  Church 
triumphant  in  Heaven. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Luther  and  the  Bible. 

DURING  the  last  three  hundred  years  and  more  it 
has  been  widely  and  persistently  proclaimed  that 
Luther  was  the  discoverer,  the  first  translator  and  the 
only  correct  interpreter  of  the  Bible.  Ever  since  the 
so-called  reformer  threw  off  the  authority  of  the  one 
true  Church  of  Christ  and  set  himself  up  in  its  place, 
the  story  went  the  rounds,  that  when  he  was  appointed 
librarian  of  his  convent  he  "discovered  among  the  dan- 
gerous and  prohibited  books"  a  copy  of  the  Sacred 
Scriptures,  carried  it  off  to  his  cell,  devoured  it  and 
was  ''converted."  The  story  was  first  put  into  cir- 
culation by  Mathesius,  Luther's  pupil  and  a  boarder  in 
his  house.  It  fascinated  the  simple,  and  many,  ig- 
norant of  the  facts,  came  to  believe  that  Luther  ex- 
humed and  dragged  into  the  light  of  day  the  Holy 
Book  that  had  lain  for  many  dark  ages  in  the  dungeons 
and  lumber  rooms  of  Popery.  Had  Luther  really 
accomplished  such  a  notable  feat,  we  should  have  just 
reason  to  sound  his  praises  and  offer  him  the  expres- 
sion of  our  deepest  gratitude.  We  are  constrained, 
however  disappointing  it  may  be  to  his  admirers,  to 
declare  in  the  interests  of  truth  that  the  tale  bearing 
on  Luther  and  his  discovery  of  the  Bible  has  no 
foundation  in  historic  fact  and  is  entirely  unworthy 
of  credence.  It  is  a  fabrication  pure  and  simple.  It 
was  invented  to  throw  dust  into  the  eyes  of  the  illit- 
erate and  to  fan  the  flames  of  senseless  bigotry.  When- 
ever and  wherever  it  is  repeated,  it  has  only  one 
object  in  view,  viz.,  to  mislead  the  unwary  into  the 
belief  that  Rome  hated  the  Bible,  that  she  did  her  best 
to  destroy  it  and  that  she  concealed  it  from  her  people 
lest  it  should  enlighten  their  supposed  blindness. 

Of  all  the  accusations  laid  at  the  door  of  the  Church 
this  one  must  appear  to  any  person  who  does  not 
wilfully  shut  his  eyes  to  facts  as  the  most  ludicrous, 


184  The  Facts  About  Luther 

and  the  truth  is,  it  is  ridiculed  and  put  down  by  the 
learned  as  too  silly  to  deny.  It  has  been  refuted  and 
repudiated  hundreds  of  times,  and  yet  so  venomous  or 
ignorant  are  the  propagators  of  error  that  they  con- 
tinue with  brazen  effrontery  to  keep  it  in  continual 
circulation.  The  story  will  not  down.  It  is  difficult 
to  convince  the  ignorant  of  its  preposterous  falsity 
and  it  continues  to  be  repeated  in  hostile  circles  for 
the  vile  purpose  of  catering  to  the  low  susceptibilities 
of  those  who  never  question  the  veracity  of  the  false 
teacher.  Although  the  story  continues  to  be  told,  the 
truth  is  that  the  Church  never  hated  the  Bible,  never 
persecuted  it,  never  tried  to  blot  it  out  of  existence 
and  never  kept  it  from  her  people.  The  contrary  is 
the  fact.  She  has  been  the  parent,  the  author  and 
maker  under  God  of  the  Bible;  she  has  always  been 
the  only  effective  and  consistent  preserver  of  the 
Bible;  she  guarded  it  through  the  ages  from  error  and 
destruction ;  she  has  ever  held  it  in  highest  veneration 
and  esteem,  and  has  ever  grounded  her  doctrines  upon 
it;  she  alone  has  the  right  to  call  it  her  book  and  she 
alone  possesses  the  Bible  in  all  its  fulness  and 
integrity. 

This  proud  claim  is  not  an  idle  boast.  It  is  a  fact 
which  cannot  be  controverted.  Serious  and  impartial 
students  of  the  question  are  all  in  agreement  on  this 
point,  and  so  true  is  this  that  no  scholar  of  repute 
would  to-day  dare  risk  his  reputation  by  giving  to  the 
public  the  silly  and  groundless  stories  circulated  con- 
cerning the  Church  in  her  relation  to  the  Bible  and 
the  inferences  the  unwary  draw  therefrom.  To  prove 
that  Luther  and  his  followers  had  little  or  no  rever- 
ence for  the  Bible,  that  they  changed  and  falsified  it, 
that  they  tampered  with  it,  and  deliberately  mistrans- 
lated numerous  passages  to  buttress  the  new  religion 
of  Protestantism,  is  a  much  easier  task  than  to  show 
that  the  Catholic  Church  was  ever  afraid  of  the  Bible, 
that  she  ever  tried  to  keep  the  Scriptures  away  from 
the  people  and  that  there  ever  was  a  time  in  her  history 
when  she  was  not  most  anxious  to  copy,  print  and  put 


Luther  and  the  Bible  185 

editions  of  the  Holy  Book  in  the  hands  of  the  faithful. 

That  Luther  did  not  discover  and  was  not  the  first 
to  give  the  Bible  to  the  people  in  the  latter's  own 
language  is  easily  proved. 

Fr.  Lucian  Johnston,  in  an  able  review  of  Grisar's 
Work,  says:  "Luther  as  well  as  every  other  man  of 
education  of  his  day  was  accustomed  to  the  Scrip- 
tures from  his  youth.  Like  thousands  of  others  in 
any  other  schools,  he  was  a  regularly  appointed  pro- 
fessor of  Scripture.  It  was  precisely  this  position  as 
teacher  of  Scripture  in  his  monastery  that  gave  the 
outlet  to  his  peculiar  views.  Had  the  Bible  been  as 
unknown  as  the  popular  biography  supposes,  Luther 
might  not  have  developed  as  he  did  along  Scriptural 
lines.  Here  again  Luther's  maturer  memory  played 
him  tricks.  He  fell  back  for  excuses  upon  the  sup- 
posed lack  of  Scriptures  just  as  he  did  upon  the  pres- 
ence of  abuses,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  no 
evidence  from  his  own  earher  w^orks  to  prove  that 
these  things  exercised  any  material  effect  upon  his 
early  mental  development." 

''Luther's  studies,"  according  to  McGiffert,  a  non- 
Catholic  writer,  in  his  biography  of  the  Reformer 
published  in  1912,  "embraced  the  writings  of  the 
Church  Fathers  and  particularly  the  Bible,  to  which 
he  was  becoming  more  and  more  attached.  It  was  in 
his  twentieth  year,  he  tells  us,  that  he  first  saw  a 
complete  copy  of  the  Scriptures  in  the  university 
library  of  Erfurt.  He  had  hitherto  supposed  they 
embraced  only  the  lessons  read  in  the  pubHc  services 
and  was  delighted  to  find  much  that  was  quite  unfa- 
miliar to  him.  His  ignorance,  it  may  be  remarked, 
though  not  exceptional,  was  his  own  fault.  The 
notion  that  Bible  reading  was  frowned  upon  by  the 
ecclesiastical  authorities  of  the  age  is  quite  unfounded." 
The  Scriptures  "were  read  regularly  in  church  and 
their  study  was  no  more  prohibited  to  university  stu- 
dents of  that  day  than  of  this." 

Professor  Vedder  of  Crozer  Theological  Seminary, 
a  non-Catholic  author,  in  his  work  on  the  Reforma- 


186  The  Facts  About  Luther 

tion  published  in  1914,  says:  "The  most  recent  writ- 
ers are  inclined  to  discredit  the  story  of  his  (Luther's) 
finding  the  Bible — as  inherently  incredible.  They 
point  out  the  facts  regarding  the  circulation  of  the 
Bible,  both  Latin  and  vernacular,  and  tell  us  that 
Luther  must  have  taken  great  pains  to  keep  himself 
in  a  state  of  ignorance,  if  he  knew  no  more  about  the 
Bible  than  this  anecdote  implies."  .  .  .  ''The  real  diffi- 
culty is  not  so  much  with  the  incident  as  with  the 
inferences  that  have  been  drawn  from  it.  Protestant 
writers  have  often  seized  on  the  occurrence  as  proof 
of  the  darkness  of  the  times,  of  the  indifference  of 
the  Church  to  the  instruction  of  the  people  in  the 
Scriptures  and  have  by  comparison  exalted  the  work 
of  the  reformers  in  their  translation  and  circulation 
of  the  Scriptures.  What  the  incident  actually  proves 
i^  merely  Luther's  own  personal  ignorance.  If  he 
did  not  know  that  the  passages  which  he  had  heard 
in  church  did  not  constitute  the  whole  Bible,  there 
were  nevertheless  in  Germany  many  who  did  know 
this."    (Vedder,  pp.  5,  6.) 

The  notion  that  people  before  the  Reformation  did 
not  possess  the  Scriptures  and  that  Luther  was  the 
first  to  translate  them  into  the  common  language  of 
the  country,  is  not  only  a  mistake,  but  a  stupid  blun- 
der. Every  layman  who  has  read  history  knows  that 
the  Church  in  the  olden  days  translated  the  Scriptures 
from  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  into  Latin  for  the  benefit 
of  her  children.  Latin  was  not  then  a  dead  language 
and  an  unknown  tongue.  It  was  a  common  language 
among  the  educated  and  was  known,  spoken  and 
written  almost  universally  in  Europe.  In  those  days 
reading  was  a  sign  of  a  certain  degree  of  scholarship 
and  erudition  and  it  would  have  been  hard  to  have 
found  any  man  capable  of  reading,  who  was  not  also 
capable  of  understanding  Latin.  The  groundwork 
of  all  school  learning  was  the  knowledge  of  the 
Latin  language.  Dr.  Peter  Bayne,  a  Protestant,  says 
in  the  Literary  World,  Oct.,  1894 :  "Latin  was  then  the 
language  of  all  men  of  culture  and  to  an  extent  prob- 


Luther  and  the  Bible  187 

ably  far  beyond  what  we  at  present  realize,  the  com- 
mon language  of  Europe :  in  those  days  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  lads,  many  of  them  poor,  studied  at  the  uni- 
versities and  learned  to  talk  Latin.  The  records  of 
the  proceedings  in  the  courts  of  law  were  in  those 
days  in  Latin  and  the  wills  of  dying  persons  were 
commonly  in  the  same  tongue.  As  Latin  was  the  pre- 
vailing language  of  the  time,  most  people  who  knew 
it  would  certainly  prefer  to  use  the  authorized  Vulgate 
to  any  vernacular  version." 

The  Rev.  Charles  Buck,  a  virulent  Protestant,  says: 
"Both  old  and  new  Testaments  were  translated  into 
Latin  by  the  primitive  Christians  :  and  while  the  Roman 
Empire  subsisted  in  Europe,  the  reading  of  the  Scrip- 
tures in  the  Latin  tongue,  which  was  the  universal 
language  of  that  Empire,  prevailed  everywhere." 
(''Bible"  in  Theological  Dictionary,  by  Rev.  Charles 
Buck.) 

"No  book,"  says  The  Cambridge  Modern  History, 
P-  639,  "was  more  frequently  republished  than  the 
Latin  Vulgate,  of  which  ninety-eight  distinct  and  full 
editions  appeared  prior  to  1500,  besides  twelve  others 
which  contained  the  Glossa  Ordinaria  or  the  Postils 
of  Lyranus.  From  1475,  when  the  first  Venetian  issue 
is  dated,  twenty-two  complete  impressions  have  been 
found  in  the  city  of  St.  Mark  alone.  Half  a  dozen 
folio  editions  came  forth  before  a  single  Latin  classic 
had  been  printed.  This  Latin  text,  constantly  pro- 
duced or  translated,  was  accessible  to  all  scholars :  it 
did  not  undergo  a  critical  recension."  In  fact  the  Bible 
in  its  Latin  dress,  observes  Mons.  Vaughan,  "was  just 
as  accessible  to  the  people  as  it  would  have  been  if  it 
had  been  in  English.  Neither  more  nor  less.  Lay 
this  fact  to  heart,  namely :  Those  who  could  read  Latin 
could  read  the  Bible  and  those  who  could  not  read 
Latin  could  not  read  anything." 

Whilst  the  Vulgate  was  in  general  use  we  know  that 
translations  into  the  vernacular  of  the  various  peoples 
were  also  made  and  read.  In  Germany,  not  to  men- 
tion Italy,  France,  Spain,  Denmark,  Holland,  Norway, 


188  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Poland,  Bavaria,  Hungary  and  other  countries,  before 
the  days  of  printing,  we  know  that  Raban  Maur,  born 
in  Mantz  in  jy^,  translated  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment into  the  Teutonic  or  old  German  tongue.  Some 
time  later,  Valafrid  Strabon  made  a  new  translation 
of  the  whole  Bible.  Huges  of  Fleury  also  translated 
the  Scriptures  into  German  and  the  monk  Ottfried  of 
Wissemburg  rendered  it  into  verse.  In  Germany 
prior  to  the  issue  of  Luther's  New  Testament  in  1522, 
no  authority  enumerates  fewer  than  fourteen  editions 
in  High  German  and  three  in  Low  German.  ''Those 
in  High  German,"  says  Vedder,  "are  apparently  re- 
prints of  a  single  MS.  version,  of  which  two  copies 
are  still  preserved,  one  in  a  monastery  of  Tepl, 
Bohemia,  the  other  in  the  Hbrary  of  the  University  at 
Freiburg  in  the  Breisgau.  The  former,  known  as  the 
Codex  Teplensis,  has  recently  been  printed  and  is 
accessible  to  all  scholars."  The  library  of  the  Paulist 
Fathers  of  New  York  City  contains,  at  present,  a  copy 
of  the  ninth  edition  of  a  German  Bible  profusely  illus- 
trated with  colored  wood  engravings  and  printed  by 
A.  Coburger  at  Nuremberg  in  1483,  the  very  year  in 
which  Luther  was  born.  In  the  year  1892  the  Protes- 
tant historian  Wilhelm  Walther  published  in  Bruns- 
wick a  book  under  the  title,  "The  German  Transla- 
tion of  the  Bible  in  the  Middle  Ages,"  in  which  he 
proves  that  previous  to  the  year  1521,  before  Luther 
ever  thought  of  translating  the  Bible  into  the  German 
language,  there  existed  seventeen  editions  of  the  whole 
Bible  in  German,  besides  an  almost  countless  number 
of  German  versions  of  the  New  Testament,  the 
Psalms,  and  other  parts  of  the  Bible.  He  gives  the 
following  list  of  pre-Lutheran  editions  of  the  whole 
Bible  in  German,  viz :  Edition  Mentel,  Strassburg, 
A.  D.  1466;  edit.  Eggenstein,  Strassburg,  1470;  edit. 
Pflanzmann,  Augsburg,  1473 ;  edit.  Zainer,  Augsburg, 
1473  5  ^^it.  Sorg,  Augsburg,  1480 ;  two  editions  of 
Koeln  (Cologne)  by  Quentel,  1480;  edit.  Koburger, 
Nuernberg,  1483 ;  edit.  Grueninger,  Strassburg,  1485 ; 
edit.   Schoensperger,  Augsburg,    1487;  edit.   Schoen- 


Luther  and  the  Bible  189 

sperger,  Augsburg,  1490;  edit.  Arndes,  Luebeck,  1494; 
edit.  H.  Otmar,  Augsburg,  1507;  the  Swiss  Bible, 
Basel,  about  1474;  edit.  Zainer,  Augsburg,  1477;  and 
edit.  S.  Otmar,  Augsburg,  15 '3. 

The  Protestant  historian,  Ludwig  Hain,  enumerates 
in  his  work,  ''Repertorium  Bibliographicum,"  Stutt- 
gart, 1826,  ninety-eight  editions  of  the  whole  Bible  in 
Latin,  which  appeared  in  print  before  the  year  1501. 

Sixty  copies  of  as  many  different  editions  of  Latin 
and  vernacular  Bibles,  all  printed  before  1503,  were 
to  be  seen  at  the  Caxton  Exhibition  in  London,  1877; 
and  seeing  is  believing.  The  Church  Times,  a  Protes- 
tant journal,  under  date  of  July  26,  1878,  writing  of 
the  list  of  Bibles  in  the  catalogue  of  the  Caxton  Cele- 
bration, 1877,  published  by  H.  Stevens,  says:  "This 
Catalogue  will  be  very  useful  for  one  thing  at  any 
rate,  as  disproving  the  popular  lie  about  Luther  finding 
the  Bible  for  the  first  time  at  Erfurt  about  1507.  Not 
only  are  there  very  many  editions  of  the  Latin  Vul- 
gate long  anterior  to  that  time,  but  there  were  actu- 
ally nine  German  editions  of  the  Bible  in  the  Caxton 
Exhibition  earlier  than  1483,  the  year  of  Luther's  birth 
and  at  least  three  more  before  the  end  of  the  century." 
Mr.  H.  Stevens  writes  in  the  Athenaeum  of  October 
6,  1883,  p.  434:  "By  1507  more  than  one  hundred 
Latin  Bibles  had  been  printed,  some  of  them  small 
and  cheap  pocket  editions.  There  had  been  besides 
thirteen  editions  of  a  translation  of  the  Vulgate  into 
German,  and  others  into  other  modern  languages. . .  . 
Among  the  most  interesting  additions  latest  made  (to 
the  Grenville  Library  in  the  British  Museum)  is  a 
nearly  complete  set  of  fourteen  grand  old  pre-Luther 
German  Bibles,  1460-15 18,  all  in  huge  folios  except 
the  twelfth,  which  is  in  quarto  form."  These  facts 
any  student  can  verify  by  a  visit  to  the  British 
Museum,  where  most  of  the  Bibles  alluded  to  are  to 
be  seen. 

The  Athenaeum  of  December  22,  1883,  contains 
an  article  on  "The  German  Bible  before  Luther"  in 
which  it  is  shown  that  what  Geffeken  calls  "the  Ger- 


190  The  Facts  About  Luther 

man  Vulgate"  was  in  common  use  among  the  people 
long  before  Luther's  time;  that  Luther  had  evidently 
the  old  Catholic  German  Bible  of  1483  before  him, 
when  making  his  translation;  and  that  consequently 
it  is  time  we  should  hear  no  more  of  Luther  as  the 
first  German  Bible  translator  and  of  his  translation 
as  an  independent  work  from  the  original  Greek. 

The  Protestant  Professor  Lindsay  in  his  partisan 
work  on  the  Reformation  published  in  Edinburgh  in 
1908  admits  that  "other  translations  of  the  Bible 
into  the  German  language  had  been  made  long  before 
Luther  began  his  work."  He  says  moreover:  ''It  is 
a  mistake  to  believe  that  the  mediaeval  Church  at- 
tempted to  keto  the  Bible  from  the  people." 

Hallam,  the  non-Catholic  historian,  in  his  work  on 
the  "Middle  Ages,"  chap.  ix.  part  2,  says:  "In  the 
eighth  and  ninth  centuries,  when  the  Vulgate  had 
teased  to  be  generally  intelligible,  there  is  no  reason 
to  suspect  any  intention  in  the  Church  to  deprive  the 
\aity  of  the  Scriptures.  Translations  were  freely  made 
into  the  vernacular  languages,  and,  perhaps,  read  in 
churches ....  Louis  the  Debonair  is  said  to  have  caused 
a  German  version  of  the  New  Testament  to  be  made. 
Otfrid,  in  the  same  century,  rendered  the  Gospels,  or, 
rather,  abridged  them,  into  German  verse.  This  work 
is  still  extant." 

The  well-known  Anglican  writer.  Dr.  Blunt,  in  his 
"History  of  the  Reformation"  (Vol.  I.  pp.  501-502) 
tells  us  that  "there  has  been  much  wild  and  foolish 
writing  about  the  scarcity  of  the  Bible  in  the  ages 
preceding  the  Reformation.  It  has  been  taken  for 
granted  that  the  Holy  Scripture  was  almost  a  sealed 
book  until  it  was  printed  in  English  by  Tyndale  and 
Coverdale,  and  that  the  only  source  of  knowledge  re- 
specting it  before  then  was  the  translation  made  by 
Wyckliffe.  The  facts  are.  .  .that  all  laymen  who  could 
read  were,  as  a  rule,  provided  with  their  Gospels, 
their  Psalter,  or  other  devotional  portions  of  the  Bible. 
Men  did,  in  fact,  take  a  vast  amount  of  personal 
trouble  with  respect  to  the  productions  of  the  Holy 


Luther  and  the  Bible  191 

Scriptures ;  and  accomplished  by  head,  hand  and  heart 
what  is  now  chiefly  done  by  paid  workmen  and  machin- 
ery. The  clergy  studied  the  Word  of  God  and  made  it 
known  to  the  laity;  and  those  few  among  the  laity 
who  could  read  had  abundant  opportunity  of  reading 
the  Bible  either  in  Latin  or  English,  up  to  the  Reforma- 
tion period." 

Long  before  the  art  of  printing  was  invented,  about 
1450,  the  monks,  friars,  clergy,  and  even  the  nuns  of 
the  Catholic  Church  spent  their  lives  in  making  copies 
of  the  Bible  in  vellum,  so  that  it  might  be  preserved, 
multiplied  and  scattered  far  and  wide  for  the  benefit 
of  all  readers.  Their  labors  in  this  direction  were 
constant,  unceasing,  and  tireless.  Through  their  in- 
dustry and  perseverance  in  reproducing  the  Sacred 
pages  from  century  to  century  every  church  and  mon- 
astery and  university  was  put  in  possession  of  copies 
of  the  Bible.  The  Bishops  and  Abbots  of  those  days 
encouraged  the  work  and  were  zealous  propagators  of 
the  Scriptures.  They  required,  moreover,  all  their 
priests  to  know,  read,  and  study  the  Inspired  Word. 
Councils  like  that  of  Toledo  held  in  835  issued  decrees 
insisting  that  Bishops  were  bound  to  inquire  through- 
out their  dioceses  whether  the  clergy  were  sufficiently 
instructed  in  the  Bible.  In  some  cases  the  clergy  were 
obliged  to  know  by  heart  not  only  the  whole  Psalter 
but,  as  under  the  rule  of  St.  Pachomius,  the  New 
Testament  as  well.  From  time  immemorial  the 
Church  always  used  a  great  portion  of  the  Bible  in 
the  celebration  of  the  Mass,  in  the  Epistles  and  Gos- 
pels for  365  days  of  the  year  and  in  the  Breviary 
which  she  enjoined  her  priests  to  recite  daily. 

The  Sacred  Scriptures  were  always  a  favorite  sub- 
ject of  study  among  the  clergy ;  and  a  popular  occu- 
pation was  the  writing  of  commentaries  upon  them, 
as  all  priests  are  aware  from  having  to  recite  a  great 
many  of  them  every  day,  ranging  from  the  time  of 
St.  Leo  the  Great  and  St.  Gregory  down  to  St. 
Bernard  and  St.  Anselm.  The  Scriptures  besides  were 
read  regularly  to  the  people  and  explained  frequently 


192  The  Facts  About  Luther 

both  in  church  and  school,  through  sermons,  instruc- 
tions, and  addresses,  so  that  the  faithful  were  steeped 
in,  and  permeated  through  and  through  with  the  in- 
spired Word  of  God.  Paintings  and  statuary  and 
frescoes  and  stained  glass  windows  were  used  in  the 
churches  to  depict  Biblical  subjects  and  fix  on  the 
people's  memories  and  understandings  the  doctrines 
of  faith  and  the  great  events  in  God's  dealings  with 
His  creatures  since  the  beginning  of  the  world. 
Through  these  and  other  means,  all,  from  the  king 
down  to  the  humblest  peasant,  came  to  know  and 
understand  the  great  and  saving  truths  of  religion  as 
found  in  the  Bible.  The  Scriptures  were  made  so 
familiar  that  the  people  could  repeat  considerable  por- 
tions from  memory,  and  their  frequent  reference 
thereto  by  way  of  passing  allusion  is  considered  now 
very  puzzling  to  those  who  are  unacquainted  with  the 
phraseology  of  the  Vulgate.  Their  ideas  seemed  to 
fall  naturally  into  the  words  of  Scripture  and  the 
language  of  the  Bible  passed  into  the  current  tongue 
of  the  people. 

One  of  the  best  evidences  of  the  mediaeval  atti- 
tude and  practise  in  the  matter  of  Bible-reading  is 
furnished  in  the  "Imitation  of  Christ"  by  Thomas  a 
Kempis,  published  about  the  year  1425.  A  Kempis, 
who  was  a  monk  in  the  archdiocese  of  Cologne,  had 
himself  made  a  M.S'.  copy  of  the  Bible.  In  the  first 
book,  chapter  I,  of  the  ''Imitation,"  there  are  some 
useful  directions  about  reading  the  Holy  Scriptures : 

"All  Holy  Scripture  should  be  read  in  the  spirit  in 
which  it  was  written.  Our  curiosity  is  often  a  hindrance 
to  us  in  reading  the  Scriptures,  when  we  wish 
to  understand  and  to  discuss,  where  we  ought  to  pass 
on  in  simplicity.  .  .  .If  thou  wilt  derive  profit,  read 
with  humility,  with  simplicity,  with  faith,  and  never 
wish  to  have  the  name  of  learning." 

In  the  eleventh  chapter  of  the  fourth  book  he  says : 
"I  shall  have  moreover  for  my  consolation  and  a 
mirror  of  life  Thy  Holy  Books,  and  above  all  Thy 
Most  Holy  Body  for  my  especial  remedy  and  refuge. 


Luther  and  the  Bible  193 

.  .  .Whilst  detained  in  the  prison  of  this  body  I 
acknowledge  that  I  need  two  things,  food  and  Hght. 
Thou  hast  therefore  given  to  me,  weak  as  I  am,  Thy 
Sacred  Body  for  the  nourishment  of  my  soul  and 
body,  and  Thou  hast  set  Thy  word  as  a  light  to  my 
feet.  Without  these  two  I  could  not  live;  for  the 
word  of  God  is  the  light  of  my  soul  and  Thy  Sacra- 
ment is  the  bread  of  life.  These  also  may  be  called 
the  two  tables  set  on  either  side  in  the  storehouse  of 
Thy  Holy  Church." 

"The  mediaeval  mind,  as  here  laid  down  in  the 
greatest  work  of  the  Middle  Ages,  does  not,"  as 
Desmond  remarks,  "seem  to  raise  any  questions  as  to 
whether  it  is  wise  to  read  the  Bible  or  as  to  whether 
the  Bible  is  difficult  to  procure.  These  matters  are 
evidently  not  even  contemplated  as  possible  issues :  on 
the  contrary,  the  excellence  of  Scripture  reading  and 
its  necessity  as  'the  light  of  the  soul'  are  dwelt  upon. 
Be  it  remembered,  too,  that  this  manual  of  A  Kempis 
came  at  once  into  the  hands  of  the  laity  as  well  as 
the  clergy,  for  it  went  into  the  vernaculars  of  every 
nation  in  Europe  only  a  few  years  after  its  first  pub- 
lication." 

An  enlightened  Protestant  writer,  the  Rev.  Doctor 
Cutts,  in  a  work  published  by  the  Society  for  Pro- 
moting Christian  Knowledge,  observes :  "There  is  a 
good  deal  of  popular  misapprehension  about  the  way 
in  which  the  Bible  was  regarded  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Some  people  think  that  it  was  very  little  read,  even 
by  the  clerg}':  whereas  the  fact  is  that  the  sermons 
of  the  mediaeval  preachers  are  m.ore  full  of  Scripture 
quotations  and  allusions  than  any  sermons  in  these 
days  and  the  writers  on  other  subjects  are  so  full  of 
Scriptural  allusion  that  it  is  evident  their  minds  were 
saturated  with  Scriptural  diction,  which  they  used  as 
commonly  and  sometimes  with  as  great  an  absence 
of  good  taste,  as  a  Puritan  of  the  Commonwealth." 

The  Quarterly  Revieiu  for  Oct.,  1879,  dealing  with 
Goulburn's  Life  of  Bp.  Herbert  de  Losinga,  says :  "The 
notion  that  people  in  the  Middle  Ages  did  not  read 


194  The  Facts  About  Luther 

their  Bibles  is  probably  exploded,  except  among  the 
more  ignorant  of  controversialists.  But  a  glance  at 
this  volume  is  enough  to  show  that  the  notion  is  not 
simply  a  mistake,  that  it  is  one  of  the  m.ost  ludicrous 
and  grotesque  of  blunders.  If  having  the  Bible  at 
their  finger's  ends  could  have  saved  the  Middle  Ages 
teachers  from  abuses  and  false  doctrine,  they  were 
certainly  well-equipped.  They  were  not  merely  accom- 
plished textuaries.  They  had  their  minds  as  saturated 
with  the  language  and  associations  of  the  Sacred  Text 
as  the  Puritans  of  the  seventeenth  century." 

Another  Protestant  writer.  Dr.  Maitland,  in  his 
valuable  work  ''The  Dark  Ages,"  page  220,  says :  "To 
come,  however,  to  the  question.  Did  the  people  in 
the  Dark  Ages  know  anything  of  the  Bible  ?  Certainly, 
it  was  not  as  commonly  known  and  as  generally  in 
the  hands  of  men  as  it  is  now,  and  has  been  almost 
ever  since  the  invention  of  printing — the  reader  must 
not  suspect  m^e  of  wishing  to  maintain  any  such  absurd 
opinion ;  but  I  do  think  that  there  is  sufficient  evidence 
(i)  that  during  that  period  the  Scriptures  were  more 
accessible  to  those  who  could  use  them,  (2)  were,  in 
fact,  more  used,  and  (3)  by  a  greater  number  of 
persons,  than  some  modern  writers  would  lead  us  to 
suppose." 

On  page  470  the  same  author  observes :  ''The  writ- 
ings of  the  Dark  Ages  are,  if  I  may  use  the  expres- 
sion, made  of  the  Scriptures.  I  do  not  merely  mean 
that  the  writers  constantly  quoted  the  Scriptures,  and 
appealed  to  them  as  authorities  on  all  occasions,  though 
they  did  this  and  it  is  a  strong  proof  of  their  familiar- 
ity with  them ;  but  I  mean  that  they  thought  and  spoke 
and  wrote  the  thoughts  and  words  and  phrases  of  the 
Bible,  and  that  they  did  this  constantly  and  habitually, 
as  the  natural  mode  of  expressing  themselves."  And 
again,  he  says :  "I  have  not  found  anything  about 
the  arts  and  engines  of  hostility,  the  blind  hatred  of 
half  barbarian  kings,  the  fanatical  fury  of  their  sub- 
jects, or  the  reckless  antipathy  of  the  Popes. . .  .1  know 
of  nothing  which  should  lead  me  to  suspect  that  any 


Luther  AND  THE  Bible  195 

human  craft  or  power  was  exercised  to  prevent  the 
reading,  the  multiplication,  the  diffusion  of  the  Word 
of  God."     (I.  6,  pp.  220-1.) 

Dr.  Maitland  in  his  work,  p.  506,  discounts  the 
absurd  story  as  told  by  D'Aubigne  of  Luther  "dis- 
covering" a  Bible  for  the  first  time  when  he  was 
twenty  years  old.  He  says :  "Before  Luther  was 
born  the  Bible  had  been  printed  in  Rome,  and  the 
printers  had  the  assurance  to  memorialize  his  Holi- 
ness, praying  that  he  would  help  them  off  with  some 
copies.  It  had  been  printed,  too,  at  Naples,  Florence, 
and  Piacenza ;  and  Venice  alone  had  furnished  eleven 
editions.  No  doubt,  we  should  be  within  the  truth 
if  we  were  to  say  that  beiide  the  multitude  of  manu- 
script copies,  not  yet  fallen  into  disuse,  the  press  had 
issued  fifty  different  editions  of  the  whole  Latin  Bible, 
to  say  nothing  of  Psalters,  New  Testaments,  or  other 
parts.  And  yet,  more  than  twenty  years  after,  we  find 
a  young  man  who  had  received  a  Very  liberal  educa- 
tion,' who  'had  made  great  proficiency  in  his  studies 
at  Magdeburg,  Eisenach,  and  Erfurt,'  and  who,  never- 
theless, did  net  know  what  a  Bible  was,  simply  because 
'the  Bible  was  unknown  in  those  days.' 

Proofs  without  number  might  easily  be  adduced  to 
show  that  the  Bible  was  known,  read  and  distributed 
with  the  sanction  and  authority  of  the  Church  in 
the  common  language  of  the  people  from  the  seventh 
to  the  fourteenth  century.  Enough,  however,  have 
been  given,  and  we  hope  these  will  C2Lvry  some 
weight  with  intelligent  and  well  disposed  non-Cath- 
olics. The  contention  of  the  ignorant  and  bigoted 
who  would  have  the  simple  and  unlettered  believe 
that  Rome  hated  the  Bible  and  did  her  best  to  keep 
it  a  locked  and  sealed  book,  is  so  utterly  absurd  and 
stupid  that  all  honest  and  patient  researches  of  dis- 
tinguished scholars  flatly  and  openly  oppose  it  by 
accumulating  evidence  from  the  simplest  facts  of  his- 
tory. Instead  of  misrepresenting  the  Church,  it  would 
be  more  consistent  with  honor  and  truth  to  proclaim 
from  the  house-tops  the  debt  all  owe  to  the  pious  and 


196  The  Facts  About  Luther 

untiring  labors  of  the  monks  and  nuns  and  clergy  of 
the  Middle  Ages  who  saved  the  written  Word  of  God 
from  extinction  and  without  whose  precious  and  dis- 
tinguished services  the  world  to-day  would  not  rejoice 
in  its  possession.  When  will  our  dissenting  brethren 
see  things  as  they  are?  When  will  they  be  candid 
enough  to  read  history  aright?  When  will  they,  in 
the  presence  of  the  Church's  jealous  guardianship 
of  the  Bible  from  the  beginning,  rid  themselves  of 
the  silly  mouthings  of  anti-Catholic  bigots  in  declaring 
that  Luther  was  the  very  first  to  give  his  poor  lan- 
guishing countrymen  the  Bible  in  their  own  tongue, 
a  book  which  as  a  student  in  Erfurt  he  knew  was 
held  in  high  esteem  and  which  as  a  monk  and  priest 
he  w^as  obliged  by  rule  to  have  known,  studied  and 
recited  for  years?  To  maintain  that  Luther  knew 
and  could  not  find  any  Bibles  except  the  one  he  was 
supposed  to  discover  as  librarian  of  his  convent,  is 
to  brand  him  as  a  liar.  It  is  interesting  now  to  recall 
what  Zwingle,  the  Swiss  Reformer,  who  made  many 
false  boasts  for  himself,  once  said  to  Luther:  ''You 
are  unjust  in  putting  forth  the  boastful  claim  of  drag- 
ging the  Bible  from  beneath  the  dusty  benches  of  the 
schools.  You  forget  that  we  have  gained  a  knowledge 
of  the  Scriptures  through  the  translations  of  others. 
You  are  very  well  aware,  with  all  your  blustering, 
that  previously  to  your  time  there  existed  a  host  of 
scholars  who,  in  Biblical  knowledge  and  philological 
attainments,  were  incomparably  your  superiors." 
(Alzog.  Ill,  49.) 

The  Catholic  Church  reigned  supreme  for  more 
than  fifteen  hundred  years  before  Luther  introduced 
his  special  conception  of  the  Bible.  During  this  long 
period  the  Church  had  it  in  her  power  to  do  with  the 
Bible  what  she  pleased.  Had  she  hated  it  she  could 
easily  have  dragged  into  the  light  of  dc^y  every  copy 
then  in  existence,  and  were  she  so  disposed  could 
have  destroyed  and  reduced  all  to  ashes.  But  did 
she  do  this?  The  truth  is  that  the  Catholic  Church, 
ruled  by  the  Pope,  instead  of  getting  rid  of  the  Bible, 


Luther  and  the  Bible  197 

saved,  preserved,  and  guarded  it  all  through  the  cen-  ' 
turies  from  its  institution  and  formation  into  one 
volume  in  397  A.  D.,  to  the  sixteenth  century.  All 
along  she  employed  her  clergy  to  multiply  it  in  the 
Greek  and  Hebrew  languages,  and  to  translate  it  into 
Latin  and  the  common  tongues  of  every  Christian 
nation  that  all  might  read  and  learn  and  know  the 
Word  of  God.  She  and  she  alone,  by  her  care  and 
loving  watchfulness,  saved  and  protected  it  from  total 
extinction  and  destruction.  Where  was  Protestantism 
when  the  Roman  Emperor  Diocletian  issued  a  decree 
to  burn  the  churches  and  destroy  the  copies  of  the 
Scriptures  ?  Where  was  Protestantism  when  the  Huns, 
the  Vandals,  the  Turks  and  Saracens  invaded  the 
Christian  countries  and  threatened  to  wipe  out  every 
vestige  of  Christian  culture  and  civilization?  Protes- 
tantism began  with  Luther  about  the  year  1520,  some 
1200  years  after  the  promulgation  of  Emperor 
Diocletian's  decree.  Had  the  Catholic  Church  not 
carefully  guarded,  transcribed  and  preserved  copies  of 
the  Bible  in  the  olden  days,  there  would  have  been 
nothing  left  for  Luther  or  any  others  to  translate. 

The  Catholic  Church  alone  from  the  beginning  de- 
fended the  Blessed  Word  of  her  Divine  Founder  and 
her  inspired  writers.  This  fact  is  entirely  ignored 
in  the  mendacious  chatter  of  ranting  spouters  and 
ignorant  writers  whose  tongues  and  pens  are  steeped 
in  gall  and  vinegar  when  they  deal  with  matters  Cath- 
olic. In  spite  of  modern  education  and  the  findings 
of  history,  this  particular  class  from  bigoted  motives 
continue  to  impose  on  their  dupes  and  insist  without 
warrant  that  the  Church  and  her  rulers  made  war, 
long  and  persistent,  upon  the  Bible,  and  that,  were 
it  not  for  "the  Founder  of  Protestantism,"  the  good 
Book  would  still  be  chained  to  church  and  monastery 
walls  as  directories  are  seen  to-day  in  hotels  and  other 
public  places.  Of  course,  Martin  Luther  must  be 
glorified  for  his  supposed  achievement.  He  translated 
the  Bible  or  what  pretended  to  be  the  Bible.  His 
mutilation  of  the  Holy  Book  and  t"he  amputation  of 


198  The  Facts  About  Luther 

several  of  its  members  make  little  or  no  difference  to 
his  admirers.  It  was  a  great  work,  one  of  the  chief 
and  most  important  labors  of  his  life,  and  according 
to  them  deserves  a  distinguished  place  on  the  roll  of 
immortal  achievements.  With  this  and  similar  inac- 
curacies and  misstatements,  they  forthwith  hail  him 
as  "the  hero  of  the  Bible."  The  title  pleases  the  mul- 
titude and  fascinates  all  who  are  ignorant  of  the  facts. 
It  is  amazing  how  easily  most  of  the  people  are  most 
of  the  time  deceived.  To  tell  these  benighted  souls 
that  Luther  was  not  "the  hero  of  the  Bible"  would 
astonish,  alarm  and  shock.  The  truth  is,  however,  he 
has  no  claim  to  such  honorable  distinction,  for,  as 
every  scholar  knows,  he  docked  and  amended  and 
added  to  the  Bible,  as  he  would,  so  that  he  made  the 
Word  of  God  become  the  word  of  man  by  making  it 
the  word  of  Dr.  Luther.  He  sacrificed  accuracy  and 
mistranslated  the  Bible  with  deliberate  purport  and 
intention,  in  order  to  fit  it  to  his  false  theories,  and  to 
make  it  serve  to  buttress  his  heresies.  His  "evangelical 
preaching,"  denouncing  the  time-honored  spiritual 
order,  abolition  of  ecclesiastical  science  and  the  re- 
jection of  the  sacraments,  required  a  substitute  for 
the  "undefiled  Word  of  God."  He  produced  the  needed 
substitute  in  his  false  and  mutilated  version,  and  for 
the  sacrilegious  achievement  his  followers  call  him  a 
"hero."  All  the  heroes  of  the  Bible  we  know  of  were 
never  guilty  of  the  liberties  he  took  with  the  Word 
of  God.  They  revered  and  respected  every  word  and 
thought  of  the  Bible.  They  neither  took  from  nor 
added  thereto — as  was  befitting  God's  message  to  man- 
kind. To  call  Luther's  version,  which  is  a  monstrous 
forgery,  the  Word  of  God  is  nothing  less  than  crim- 
inal and  blasphemous. 

Luther  began  his  version  of  the  Scriptures  in  Ger- 
man during  his  residence  at  the  Wartburg.  He  had 
>ust  been  ordered  by  Charles  V.,  who  saw  it  was 
impossible  to  convince  him  of  his  errors,  to  leave 
Worms  under  an  imperial  safeguard.  After  going 
some  distance  from  Worms,   the  imperial  protector 


Luther  and  the  Bible  199 

was  dismissed  and  then,  according  to  a  previous  ar- 
rangement, a  party  of  friends,  not  a  band  of  hostile 
armed  men,  as  is  ignorantly  told,  appeared  upon  the 
scene,  took  him  from  his  wagon,  mounted  him  on  a 
horse  and  conducted  him  in  the  silence  of  the  night 
to  the  ancient  and  historic  castle  of  Wartburg.  To 
ensure  his  incognito  in  this  place  selected  for  his 
retirement,  he  put  aside  his  monk's  habit,  donned 
the  dress  of  a  country  gentleman,  allowed  his  hair 
and  beard  to  grow  and  was  introduced  to  those  about 
not  as  Martin  Luther,  but  as  Squire  George.  This 
was  the  second  time  he  changed  his  name.  The  first 
time  as  we  have  seen,  was  about  1512,  long  after  he 
entered  the  University  of  Erfurt,  where  he  was  en- 
rolled among  the  students  not  as  Luther  but  as  Liider, 
by  which  name  his  family  was  known  in  the  com- 
munity from  time  immemorial.  The  change  was  per- 
haps pardonable,  for  Liider  has  a  vile  signification, 
conveying  the  idea  of  ''carrion,"  *'beast,"  "low  scoun- 
drel." The  second  assumed  name.  Squire  George, 
was  a  decided  improvement  on  Liider. 

The  Castle  of  Wartburg,  where  Luther  spent  ten 
months  in  retirement,  unknown  except  to  some 
friends  who  were  in  the  secret,  was  full  of  historic 
and  inspiring  memories.  It  was  once  the  residence 
of  the  gentle  and  amiable  St.  Elizabeth  and  was  on 
this  account  suggestive  of  the  holiest  recollections.  To 
live  within  such  precincts  might  be  considered  a  privi- 
lege and  one  well  calculated  to  stimulate  to  holiness 
and  sanctity  of  behavior.  The  place,  however,  was 
little  to  the  liking  of  the  so-called  "courageous  apos- 
tle," who  was  designedly  seized  upon  by  pre-arrange- 
ment  with  the  Elector  of  Saxony  and  who  was  con- 
stantly protected  by  his  friends  whilst  disguised  as 
a  country  magnate  under  the  assumed  name  of  Squire 
George.  He  would  have  much  preferred  to  be  out  in  the 
open  to  continue  his  revolutionary  movement  publicly 
and  among  the  masses,  but  his  intimates  decreed  he 
should  remain  in  solitude  in  the  hope  that  the  storm 
xhich  his  wild  teachings  provoked  might  after  a  while 


200  The  Facts  About  Luther 

blow  over.  His  stay  in  the  Wartburg  from  May,  1 521,  to 
March,  1522,  was,  according  to  his  own  account,  a  time 
of  idleness,  despair  and  temptation.    Remorse  of  con- 
science tormented  him.  "It  is  a  dangerous  thing,"  he  says, 
**to  change  all  spiritual  and  human  order  against  com- 
mon sense."     (De  Wette  2.2  10  q.)     On  November 
25th,  1 521,  he  wrote  to  the  Augustinians  in  Witten- 
berg: ''With  how  much  pain  and  labor  did  I  scarcely 
justify   my   conscience   that   I   alone   should   proceed 
against  the  Pope,  hold  him  for  Antichrist  and  the 
bishops  for  his  apostles.     How  often  did  my  heart 
punish  me  and  reproach  me  with  this  strong  argu- 
ment :     'Art  thou  alone  wise  ?'     Could  all  the  others 
err  and  have  erred  for  a  long  time?     How  if  thou 
errest   and   leadest   into   error   so   many  people   who 
would  all  be  damned  forever?"    (De  Wette  2-107.) 
He  often  tried  to  rid  himself  of  these  anxieties,  but 
they  always  returned.     Even  in  his  old  age,  a  voice 
within,  which  he  believed  to  be  the  voice  of  the  devil, 
asked  him  if  he  were  called  to  preach  the  Gospel  in 
such  a  manner  "as  for  many  centuries  no  bishop  or 
saint  had  dared  to  do."     (Sammtliche  Werke,  59,  286: 
60.  6.  45.)     Not  only  was  he  tormented  by  remorse 
of   conscience   in   regard   to  his   revolutionary   work 
but  he  was  sorely  tried  by  the  devil  whom  he  thought 
he  saw  in   every   shape  and   form.     Writinsr  to   his 
personal  friend,  Nicholas  Gerbel,  he  says :    "You  can 
believe  that  I  am  exposed  to  a  thousand  devils  in  this 
indolent  place."     He  told  another  friend,  Myconius, 
that  in  the  Castle  of  Wartburg,  "the  devil  in  the  form 
of  a  dog  came  tvv^ice  to  kill  him."     (Myconius,  Hist. 
Reform.   42.)      "Throughout  life,"  Vedder   remarks, 
"he  was  accustomed  to  refer  whatever  displeased  or 
vexed  him  or  seemed  to  hinder  his  work  to  the  direct 
agency  of  the  devil,  in  whom  he  believed  with  rather 
more  energy  than  he  believed  in  God.     So  now,  in- 
stead of  blaming  his  mode  of  life  and  changing  it,  he 
ascribes  all  his  troubles  to  Satan.     He  even  seems  to 
have  imagined  that  he  had  personal  interviews  with 
the  devil."     (Vedder  p.  169.)     From  his  hiding  place 


Luther  and  the  Bible  201 

he  writes  to  Melanchthon,  who  of  course  was  in  the 
secret  of  his  retreat,  to  inform  him  of  his  doings  and 
says:  "It  is  now  eight  days  that  I  neither  write  any- 
thing nor  pray,  nor  study,  partly  by  reason  of  tempta- 
tions of  the  flesh,  partly  because  vexed  by  other  cares. 
I  sit  here  in  idleness  and  pray,  alas !  little,  and  sigh  not 
for  the  Church  of  God.  Much  more  am  I  consumed 
by  the  fires  of  my  unbridled  flesh.  In  a  word,  I  who 
should  burn  of  the  spirit,  am  consumed  by  the  flesh 
and  by  lasciviousness."  (De  Wette,  2 :  22.)  His  was  a 
most  lamentable  state  whilst  confined  at  the  Wartburg. 
No  wonder  he  produced  a  Bible  full  of  malicious 
translations.  A  victim  of  fleshly  lust  and  one  in  con- 
stant contact  with  Satan  could  hardly  be  expected  to 
treat  the  undefiled  Word  of  God  with  reverence.  What 
reliance  can  be  placed  in  a  translation  of  the  Bible 
made  under  such  unfavorable  circumstances? 

Luther,  in  a  letter  to  his  friend  Lange,  dated  Decem- 
ber 18,  1 521,  announces  his  intention  to  translate  the 
New  Testament  into  German.  On  March  30,  1522, 
he  writes  to  Spalatin,  another  friend,  to  tell  that  he 
has  completed  the  work  and  placed  it  in  the  care  of 
a  few  intimates  for  inspection.  This  leaves  little  more 
than  ten  weeks  for  the  completion  of  what  he  hoped 
would  ''prove  a  worthy  work."  After  some  revision, 
the  translation  was  ready  for  the  press  and  given  to 
the  public  September  22,  1^22.  The  whole  work  was 
done  in  great  haste  and  as  might  be  expected  suf- 
fered in  consequence.  The  faults  and  imperfections 
everywhere  in  evidence  are  numerous  and  unpardon- 
able. The  rapidity  with  which  the  work  was  pro- 
duced by  both  author  and  publisher  borders  on  the 
marvelous.  *Tt  would  be  difficult,"  observes  Vedder, 
"to  believe  that  a  complete  translation  would  have 
been  made  by  a  man  of  Luther's  limited  attainments 
in  Greek  and  with  the  imperfect  apparatus  that  he 
possessed  in  the  short  space  of  ten  weeks.  .  .  .Any 
minister  to-day  who  has  had  the  Greek  course  of  a 
college  and  seminary,  is  a  far  better  scholar  than 
Luther.  Let  such  a  man,  if  he  thinks  Luther's  achieve- 


202  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ment  possible,  attempt  the  accurate  translation  of  a 
single  chapter  of  the  New  Testament — such  a  trans- 
lation as  he  would  be  willing  to  print  under  his  own 
name — and  multiply  the  time  consumed  by  tb*^  two 
hundred  and  sixty  pages.  He  will  be  speedily  con- 
vinced that  the  feat  attributed  to  Luther  is  an  impos- 
sible one.  What  then?  Is  the  whole  story  false? 
That  too  is  impossible — the  main  facts  are  too  well 
attested.  The  solution  of  an  apparently  insoluble  con- 
tradiction is  a  very  simple  one :  Luther  did  not  make 
an  independent  translation :  he  never  claimed  that  he 
did:  none  of  his  contemporaries  made  the  claim  for 
him.  It  is  only  his  later  admirers  who  have  made  this 
statement  to  enhance  his  glory,  just  as  they  have 
unduly  exaggerated  for  the  same  purpose  the  paucity 
of  the  Scriptures  and  the  popular  ignorance  of  them 
before  Luther's  day.  We  now  know  that  both  these 
assertions  are  untrue  to  historic  fact  and  have  mis- 
led many  unwary  persons  into  inferences  far  indeed 
from  the  truth.  The  two  assertions  are  so  intimately 
connected  that  in  showing  either  to  be  unfounded 
the  other  is  also  and  necessarily  controverted."  (Ved- 
der,  p.  170.) 

The  same  Protestant  Professor  tells  us  that  "the 
version,  Codex  Teplensis,  was  certainly  in  the  pos- 
session of  Luther  and  was  as  certainly  used  by  him 
in  the  preparation  of  his  translation.  This  fact,  once 
entirely  unsuspected  and  then  hotly  denied,  has  been 
proved  by  the  'deadly  parallel/  It  appears  by  a  verse 
by  verse  comparison  that  this  old  German  Bible  was 
in  fact  so  industriously  used  by  Luther,  that  the 
only  accurate  description  of  Luther's  version  is  to 
call  it  a  careful  revision  of  the  older  text.  . .  .He  had 
a  better  text  than  had  been  available  to  former  trans- 
lators...  .The  old  German  Bible  had  been  translated 
from  the  Vulgate  and  had  followed  it  slavishly.  Luther 
proposed  to  use  the  original  Greek  and  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures as  the  basis  of  his  work.  For  the  New  Testa- 
ment he  had  the  second  Basel  edition,  15 19,  of  Eras- 
mus, in  which  many  of  the  misprints  of  the  first  edi- 


LUTIIER  AND  THE  BiBLE  203 

tion  had  been  corrected.  He  did  not  fail  to  consult 
the  Vulgate  and  sometimes  followed  that  version, 
which  in  some  passages  was  made  from  an  older  text 
than  that  of  Erasmus." 

When  Luther  finished  the  translation  of  the  New 
Testament,  he,  with  the  assistance  of  many  friends 
such  as  Melanchthon,  Spalatin,  Sturtz,  Brugenhagen, 
Crnciger,  Justin  Jonas  and  others,  undertook  the  com- 
pletion of  the  entire  Bible,  which  was  published  in 
German  in  1534.  This  work,  which  occupied  so  many 
years,  was  not  entirely  to  his  liking.  It  needed  to  be 
altered  still  more  and  fitted  more  exactly  to  suit  his 
new  teachings  and  more  especially  his  main  doctrine, 
that  nothing  could  be  required  to  be  believed  that 
is  not  explicitly  laid  c'own  in  the  Bible.  It  never 
occurred  to  him  that  this  much  cherished  dogma,  if 
accepted,  must  be  rejected,  for  it  is  not  itself  ex- 
plicitly laid  down  anywhere  in  the  Bible.  This  incon- 
sistency did  not,  however,  trouble  him.  Intent  only 
on  urging  his  false  views,  he  never  stopped  in  his 
work  but  went  on  changing  and  altering  the  orig- 
inal translation  until  his  death.  No  fewer  than  five 
editions  of  the  complete  work  were  issued  during  his 
lifetime.  After  1545,  when  the  final  text  was  pub- 
lished, numerous  unauthorized  reprints,  abounding  in 
more  changes,  were  given  to  the  public,  so  that,  as 
Vedder  says,  **a  critical  recension  finally  became  nec- 
essary. This  was  accomplished  about  1700  by  the 
Canstein  Bible  Institute,  and  that  edition  became  the 
textus  receptiis  of  the  German  Bible,  until  its  recent 
revision  by  a  committee  of  distinguished  German 
scholars.  This  revision  is  now  published  at  the  Francke 
Orphanaj^e,  Halle,  and  is  rapidly  superseding  the  orig- 
inal 'Luther  Bible.'  "  We  wonder  were  poor  Luther 
alive  to-day  what  epithet  the  master  of  vituperation 
would  fling  at  the  "distinguished  German  scholars" 
who  had  the  boldness  to  give  their  revision  and  not 
his  Bible  to  the  world. 

Luther's  translation  was  genuinely  German  in  style 
and  spirit.    He  wanted  to  make  it  thoroughly  German 


204  The  Facts  About  Luther 

and  to  make  the  sacred  authors  read  as  though  they 
had  been  written  in  German.  In  this  he  had  no  Httle 
difficuhy.  "Great  God,"  he  writes,  "what  a  labor  to 
employ  force  to  make  the  Hebrew  poets  express  them- 
selves in  German."  To  attain  his  end  he  often  sacri- 
ficed accuracy  and  "allowed  himself,"  as  McGiffert 
says,  "many  liberties  with  the  text,  to  the  great  scan- 
dal of  his  critics."  He  boasted  that  his  version  was 
better  as  a  translation  than  the  Vulgate  or  Septr.agint. 
The  earlier  translations  were  faithful  to  a  nicety  and 
much  more  literally  correct,  but  their  German,  being 
in  a  formative  state,  was  harsh  and  crude  and  occa- 
sionally somewhat  obscure."  At  that  time  dialects 
were  many  and  various,  so  that  people  living  only  a 
short  distance  apart  could  scarcely  understand  one 
another.  Though  Luther  did  not  create  the  German 
language  he  labored  in  conjunction  with  the  Saxon 
Chancery  to  reform,  modify,  and  enrich  it.  His  efforts 
were  not  without  results.  He  had  a  large,  full 
and  flexible  vocabulary  which  he  used  with  force  in 
his  translation,  where  is  displayed  the  whole  wealth, 
power  and  beauty  of  the  German  language.  He  wished 
to  make  his  Bible  really  a  German  book  and  under- 
stood by  all  alike.  He  did  not  want  the  people,  as 
he  said,  "to  get  their  German  from  the  Latin  as  these 
asses,"  alluding  to  his  predecessors,  "do."  Lie  gave 
them  German,  simple,  idiomatic,  racy,  colloquial,  clas- 
sical, and  as  his  Bible  sold  for  a  trifle,  it  was  pur- 
chased by  many,  read  widely  and  exercised  a  decided 
influence  in  giving  the  whole  country  a  common 
tongue.  We  cannot  deny  that  his  translation  sur- 
passes those  which  had  been  published  before  him  in 
the  perfection  of  language,  but  while  we  admit  this, 
we  cannot  but  regret  that  he  failed  with  all  his  beauty 
of  diction  to  give  what  his  predecessors  valued  more 
than  all  else,  a  correct,  faithful  and  true  rendition  of 
"the  undefiled  Word  of  God."  His  work  is  praised 
as  the  first  classic  of  German  literature,  but  the  dis- 
tinction can  never  blind  the  scholar  to  its  many  and 
serious  imperfections  and  faults  and  its  arbitrary  addi- 


Luther  and  the  Bible  205 

tions  and  changes  maliciously  introduced  to  favor  his 
individual  and  fanci'ful  teachings  as  against  those  of 
the  Church  sacredly  held  and  constantly  adhered  to 
from  the  beginning  of  Christianity. 

Jerome  Emser,  a  learned  doctor  of  Leipsic,  made 
a  critical  examination  of  Luther's  translation  when 
it  first  appeared  and  detected  no  less  than  a  thousand 
glaring  faults.  He  was  the  first  who  undertook  to 
show  the  falseness  of  the  translation  and  to  correct 
its  errors;  he  published  a  very  faithful  version,  in 
which  all  the  passages  that  had  been  falsified  in  the 
other  may  be  easily  seen.  Luther  did  not  like  this 
exposure  of  his  work  by  his  learned  antagonist  and 
the  only  reply  he  made  v/as  to  launch  out  his  usual 
volley  of  insulting  and  abusive  epithets.  ''These  popish 
asses,"  said  he,  "are  not  able  to  appreciate  my  labors." 
(Sackendorf,  Comm.  L.  I.  sect.  52.)  Yet  even  Sacken- 
dorf  gives  us  to  understand  that,  in  his  cooler  mo- 
ments, the  reformer  availed  himself  of  Emser's  correc- 
tions and  made  many  further  changes  in  his  version. 

Martin  Bucer,  a  brother  Reformer,  says  that  Luther's 
"falls  in  translating  and  explaining  the  Scriptures 
were  manifest  and  not  a  few."  (Bucer,  Dial,  contra 
Melanchthon.)  Zwingle,  another  leading  Reformer, 
after  examining  his  translation,  openly  pronounced  it 
"a  corruption  of  the  Word  of  God."  (Amicable  Dis- 
cussion, Trevern,  i,  129 — note.)  Hallam  says:  "The 
translation  of  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  by 
Luther  is  more  renowned  for  the  purity  of  its  Ger- 
man idiom  than  for  its  adherence  to  the  original  text. 
Simon  has  charged  him  with  ignorance  of  Hebrew ; 
and  when  we  consider  how  late  he  came  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  that  or  the  Greek  language,  it  may  be  believed 
that  his  acquaintance  with  them  was  far  from  exten- 
sive." (Hallam,  Historical  Literature  I.  201.)  "It 
has  been  as  ill-spoken  of  among  Calvinists  as  by  the 
Catholics  themselves"  (Note  ibid).  It  is  now,  as  might 
be  expected,  grown  almost  obsolete,  even  in  Germany 
itself.     It  is  viewed  as  faulty  and  insufficient  in  many 


206  The  Facts  About  Luther 

respects.     In  1836,  many  Lutheran  consistories  called 
for  its  entire  revision. 

The  errors  in  Luther's  version  were  not  those  of 
ignorance,  but  were  a  wilful  perversion  of  the  Scrip- 
tures to  suit  his  own  views.  A  few  examples  will 
suffice  to  prove  our  contention.  In  St.  Matthew  III, 
2,  he  renders  the  word,  "repent,  or  do  penance,''  by 
the  expression  "mend,  or  do  better." 

Acts  XIX,  18,  "Many  of  them  that  believed  came 
confescing  and  declaring  their  deeds."  Lest  this 
should  confirm  the  practice  of  confession,  he  refers  the 
deeds  to  the  apostles,  and  renders  "they  acknowledge 
the  miracles  of  the  apostles."  These  errors  were  after- 
wards corrected  by  his  followers.  The  expression  "full 
of  grace"  in  the  Annunciation  of  the  Blessed  Virgin, 
he  renders  "Thou  gracious  one."  Romans  IV,  15;  "the 
law  worketh  wrath,"  he  translates,  "the  law  worketh 
only  wrath,"  thus  adding  a  word  to  the  text  and  chang- 
ing its  sense. 

Romans  III,  28,  "We  account  a  man  to  be  justified 
by  faith  without  the  works  of  the  law"  he  renders  by 
the  interpolating  of  a  word,  "We  hold  that  a  man  is 
justified  without  works  of  the  law  by  faith  alone," 
His  answer  to  Emser's  exposition  of  his  perversion 
of  the  text  was:  "If  your  Papist  annoys  you  with  the 
word  {alone),  tell  him  straightway:  Dr.  Martin 
Luther  will  have  it  so :  Papist  and  ass  are  one  and 
the  same  thing.  Whoever  will  not  have  my  trans- 
lation, let  him  give  it  the  go-by :  the  devil's  thanks  to 
him  who  censures  it  without  my  will  and  knowledge. 
Luther  will  have  it  so  and  he  is  a  doctor  above  all 
the  doctors  in  Popedom."  (Amic.  Discussion  i,  127.) 
Thus  Luther  defends  his  perversion  of  Scripture  and 
makes  himself  the  supreme  judge  of  the  Bible.  His 
work,  faulty  and  erroneous,  places  the  true  Lutheran 
in  a  serious  dilemma.  He  needs  the  Bible  for  his  sal- 
vation and  yet  he  cannot  be  sure  that  Luther  has 
given  him  a  version  possessing  any  binding  force. 

Luther  translated  and  altered  the  Sacred  Word  by 
the  freedom  of  his  opinions.     His   irreverent  work 


Luther  and  the  Bible  207 

did  not  stop  here.  As  he  rejected  the  authority  of 
the  teaching  Church,  he  had  no  3^uide  but  his  own 
whim  and  took  upon  himself  to  expunge  from  the 
canon  of  Inspired  Writings  those  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, known  as  deuterocanonical  books,  although  they 
had  always  been  received  by  the  Oriental  churches 
and  especially  by  those  who  occupied  the  Holy  Land, 
and  who,  consequently,  had  preserved  the  books  con- 
tinuously. In  his  prefaces  to  these  books  he  gives 
at  length  his  opinion  as  to  their  character  and  author- 
ity. The  result  was  that  they  were  published  as 
''Apocrypha,"  or  books  profitable  for  pious  reading, 
but  no  part  of  the  Sacred  Text,  because  not  inspired  by 
the  Holy  Ghost.  The  catalogue  in  the  edition  of  1534 
gives  as  "Apocrypha,"  Judith,  Wisdom,  Tobias, 
Ecclesiasticus,  the  two  books  of  Maccabees,  parts  of 
Esther,  parts  of  Daniel  and  the  prayer  of  Manasses. 

But  even  for  the  books  he  chose  to  retain,  he  showed 
little   or   no   respect.      Here   are   some   examples   of 
his  judgments  on  them.     Of  the  Pentateuch  he  says : 
**We   have  no  wish  either  to   see  or  hear   Moses." 
"Judith  is  a  good,  serious,  brave  tragedy."   "Tobias 
is  an  elegant,  pleasing,  godly  comedy."     "Ecclesias- 
ticus is  a  profitable  book  for  an  ordinary  man."     "Of 
very  little  worth  is  the  book  of  Baruch,  whoever  the 
worthy  Baruch  may  be."    "Esdras  I  would  not  trans- 
late, because  there  is  nothing  in  it  which  you  might 
not  find  better  in  Aesop."    "Job  spoke  not  as  it  stands 
\  written  in  his  book ;  but  only  had  such  thoughts.     It 
I  is  merely  the  argument  of  a   fable.     It  is  probable 
}  that  Solomon  wrote  and  made  this  book."    "The  book 
I  entitled  'Ecclesiastes'  ought  to  have  been  more  com- 
.  plete.     There  is  too  much  incoherent  matter  in  it.     It 
has  neither  boots  nor  spurs ;  but  rides  only  in  socks 
as  I  myself  did  when  an  inmate  of  the  cloister.     Solo- 
mon did  not,  therefore,  write  this  book,  which  was 
made  in  the  days  of  the  Maccabees  of  Sirach.     It  is 
like  a  Tahrsud,  com.pilcd  from  many  books,  perhaps 
in   Egypt  at  the   desire   of   King  Evergetes."     "The 
book  of  Esther  I  toss  into  the  Elbe.     I  am  such  an 


20S  The  Facts  About  Luther 

enemy  to  the  book  of  Esther  that  I  wish  it  did  not 
exist,  for  it  Judaizes  too  much  and  has  in  it  a  great 
deal  of  heathenish  naughtiness."  "The  history  of 
Jonah  is  so  monstrous  that  it  is  absolutely  incredible." 
**The  first  book  of  the  Maccabees  might  have  been 
taken  into  the  Scriptures,  but  the  second  is  rightly 
cast  out,  though  there  is  some  good  in  it." 

The  books  of  the  New  Testament  fared  no  better. 
He  rejected  from  the  Canon  the  Epistle  to  the  He- 
brews, the  Epistle  of  St.  James,  the  Epistle  of  St. 
^  Jude  and  the  Apocalypse.  These  he  placed  at  the 
end  of  his  translation,  after  the  others  which  he  called 
"the  true  and  certain  capital  books  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment." He  says:  "The  first  three  (Gospels)  speak 
of  the  Avorks  of  Our  Lord  rather  than  of  his  oral 
#  teachings :  that  of  St.  John  is  the  only  sympathetic, 
f  the  only  true  Gospel  and  should  be  undoubtedly  pre- 
ferred  to  the  others.  In  like  manner  the  Epistles  of 
St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  are  superior  to  the  first  three 
Gospels."  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  did  not  suit 
him.  "It  need  not  surprise  one  to  find  here,"  he 
says,  "bi^sjDf  wood,  hay  and  straw."  The  Epistle 
of  St.  James,  Luther  denounced  as  "an  epistle  of 
straw."  "I  do  not  hold  it,"  he  said,  "to  be  his  writ- 
ing, and  I  cannot  place  it  among  the  capital  books." 
He  did  this  because  it  proclaimed  the  necessity  of 
good  works  contrary  to  his  heresy.  "There  are  many 
things  objectionable  in  this  book,"  he  says  of  the 
Apocalypse;  "to  my  mind  it  bears  upon  it  no  marks 
of  an  apostolic  or  prophetic  character.  .  .  .Every  one 
may  form  his  own  judgment  of  this  book;  as  for 
myself,  I  feel  an  aversion  to  it,  and  to  me  this  is 
sufficient  reason  for  rejecting  it."  (SammtHche 
Werke,  63,  169-170.)  At  the  present  day  and  for  a 
long  time  previously,  the  Lutherans,  ashamed  of  these 
excesses,  have  replaced  the  two  Epistles  and  the 
Apocalypse  in  the  Canon  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures. 

Luther  declared  time  and  again  that  he  looked  upon 
the  Bible  "as  if  God  himself  spoke  therein."  "Yet," 
as  Gigot  says,  ''inconsistently  with  this  statement,  he 


•     Luther  and  the  Bible  209 

freely  charges  the  sacred  writers  with  inaccurate  state- 
ments, unsound  reasonings,  the  use  of  imperfect  mate- 
rials and  even  urges  the  authority  of  Christ  against 
that  of  Holy  Writ."  In  a  word,  as  is  admitted  by  a 
recent  Protestant  writer:  "Luther  has  no  fixed  theory 
of  inspiration:  if  all  his  works  suppose  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Sacred  Writings,  all  his  conduct  shows  that 
he  makes  himself  the  supreme  judge  of  it."  (Rabaud, 
p.  42.)  His  pride  was  intense.  He  conceived  him- 
self directly  illuminated  by  the  Holy  Ghost  and  second 
only  to  the  Godhead.  In  this  spirit  of  arrogance 
and  balspheny,  he  did  as  he  willed  with  the  Sacred 
Volume,  which  had  been  handed  down  through  the 
centuries  in  integrity,  truth,  and  authority.  The  old 
and  accepted  Bible  he  knew  in  his  professorial  days 
was  an  awkward  book  for  him,  when  in  the  period 
of  his  religious  vertigo  he  rebelled  against  the  Church 
which  had  preserved,  guarded  and  protected  it  during 
the  previous  fifteen  hundred  years.  It  went  straight 
against  his  heresies  and  he  would  not  have  it  as  it 
had  been  handed  down  in  integrity  and  complete- 
ness. He  twisted,  distorted,  and  mutilated  it.  He 
changed  it,  added  to  and  took  from  it,  to  make  it  fit 
his  newly  found  teaching.  He  feels  abundantly  com- 
petent, by  his  own  interior  and  spiritual  instinct,  to 
pronounce  dogmatically  which  books  in  the  Canon 
of  Scripture  are  inspired  and  which  are  not.  Nothing 
embarrasses  him.  To  make  his  Testament  more  Luth- 
eran, though  less  Scriptural,  was  his  object.  Reverent 
scholars  decried  his  arbitrary  handling  of  the  Sacred 
Volume.  He,  however,  cared  little  for  their  protests. 
In  his  usual  characteristic  raving,  he  cries  out: — 
"Papists  and  asses  are  synonymous  terms."  ...He 
will  have  his  changes  in  the  sacred  text  right  or  wrong. 
"Here  one  must  yield  not  a  nail's  breadth  to  any, 
neither  to  the  angels  of  Heaven,  nor  to  the  gates  of 
Hell,  nor  to  St.  Paul,  nor  to  a  hundred  Emperors,  nor 
to  a  thousand  Popes,  nor  to  the  whole  world;  and  this 
be  my  watchword  and  sign: — tessera  et  symhohim." 
The  Inspired  Word  of  God  was  nothing  to  Luther 


210  The  Facts  About  Luther 

when  it  could  not  be  made  to  square  with  Lutheran- 
ism.  He  is  prepared  to  assume  the  whole  responsi- 
bility for  the  changes  he  made  and  believes  he  has  the 
faculty  of  judging  the  Bible  without  danger  of  error. 
He  believes  he  is  infallible.  "My  word,"  says  he,  in 
an  exhortation  to  his  followers,  "is  the  word  of  Christ : 
my  mouth  is  the  mouth  of  Christ."  And  to  prove  this, 
he  indulges  in  a  prophecy:  he  proclaims  that  "if  his 
Gospel  is  preached  but  for  tv/o  years,  then.  Pope, 
bishops,  cardinals,  priests,  monks,  nuns,  bells,  bell- 
towers,  masses — rules,  statues  and  all  the  vermin  and 
riff-raff  of  the  Papal  government,  will  have  vanished 
like  smoke."  Luther  with  all  this  flourish  of  trum.- 
pets  proved  himself  a  false  prophet.  The  Church 
that  he  thought  would  "vanish  like  sm.oke"  is  still  in 
existence  and  now  as  ever  cries  out  in  the  words  of 
her  Founder:  "There  will  rise  up  false  Christs  and 
false  prophets  and  they  shall  show  signs  and  won- 
ders to  seduce,  if  it  were  possible,  even  the  elect. 
Take  ye  heed,  therefore :  behold  I  have  foretold  you 
all  things."     St.  Mark  XHI,  22,  23. 

Not  only  did  Luther  knowingly  make  additions  to 
the  text  and  expunge  from  the  Canon  some  of  the 
Inspired  Books,  but,  he  distorted  the  meaning  of 
several  passages  by  interpretations  that  were  erroneous 
and  nothing  short  of  blasphemous.  He  even  went  so 
far  as  to  accuse  the  Divine  Author  of  playful  men- 
dacity,  of  irony,  when  no  ether  sense  of  the  Inspired 
Words  would  suit  the  Lutheran  cause.  "This  cham- 
pion of  free  inquiry/'  says  Alzog,  the  historian,  "was 
obliged  to  go  whither  the  logical  deductions  of 
his  system  would  lead  him:  and  he  did  not  halt  at 
difficulties.  There  were  Scripture  texts  plainly 
against  his  theory  of  the  inherent  slavery  of  the  human 
will :  but  even  these  he  set  aside  by  an  ipse  dixit,  dis- 
torting them  from  their  natural  sense  and  obvious 
meaning,  by  blasphemously  asserting  that  God  in 
inspiring  the  passages  in  question,  was  playfully  men- 
dacious, secretly  meaning  just  the  reverse  of  what  He 
openly  revealed;  and  that  the  Apostles,  when  speak- 


Luther  and  the  Bible  211 

ing  of  the  human  will  and  actions,  gave  way  to  an 
impulse  of  unseemly  levity  and  used  words  in  an 
ironical  sense."     (Alzog.  Vol.  Ill,  p.  227.) 

"To  do,"  said  Luther,  ''means  to  believe — to  keep  the 
law  by  faith.  The  passage  in  Matthew:  Do  this  and 
thou  shalt  live,  signifies  Believe  this  and  thou  shalt 
live.  The  words,  Do  this  have  an  ironical  sense,  as 
if  our  Lord  should  say :  Thou  wilt  do  it  to-morrow, 
but  not  to-day ;  only  make  an  attempt  to  keep  the  com- 
mandments, and  the  trial  will  teach  thee  the  ignominy 
of  thy  failure." 

This  illustration,  one  out  of  many,  shows  Luther's 
unscrupulous  method  of  distorting  the  plain  and  evi- 
dent meaning  of  the  Inspired  Word  of  God.  What 
he  did  with  this  text,  he  did  with  hundreds  of  others. 
In  the  most  reckless  and  unblushing  manner  tHis  self- 
appointed  expositor  twisted  backwards  and  forwards 
the  Sacred  Word  at  will  to  force  it  to  conform  to  his 
special  whims  and  fancies.  When  he  had  shorn  the 
Bible  of  its  proportions  and  changed  it  in  the  direction 
of  his  new  religious  'theories,  he  had  the  daring  and 
boldness  to  call  his  v/ork  the  work  of  God.  Like  all 
other  heretics  he  made  himself  an  infallible  authority, 
and  as  such  insisted  that  his  special  version  be  re- 
ceived as  the  work  of  God.  He  knew  full  well  that 
he  had  mutilated,  distorted,  and  perverted  the  Bible, 
but  what  cared  he  when,  in  his  folly,  he  wanted  his 
word  to  be  taken  for  the  V/ord  of  God.  His  new  re- 
ligious system  was  formulated  and  based  exclusively 
on  the  Scriptures,  not  however  on  the  Scriptures 
known  to  the  world  for  so  many  centuries  before,  but 
the  Scriptures  as  translated,  interpreted  and  under- 
stood by  the  "Founder  of  Lutheranism." 

This  travesty  of  the  Divine  Revelation,  falsified  in 
most  of  its  lines  and  stripped  of  its  Divine  character, 
he  gave  to  the  people  on  his  own  authority  to  be 
henceforward  their  sole  means  of  salvation  and  their 
guide  in  judging  for  themselves  in  all  matters  of  faith. 
To  spite  the  authority  of  the  Church  and  advance 
his  destructive  theories,  he  constituted  everybody,  man 


212  The  Facts  About  Luther 

or  won:an,  young  or  old,  learned  or  unlearned,  wise 
or  foolish,  absolute  judges  of  the  meaning  of  the 
Bible.  This  arbitrary  act  pleased  the  unthinking  mul- 
titudes, who  now  with  lamentable  folly  began  like  him- 
self to  reject  the  authority  of  the  Church  established 
by  God  and  to  substitute  therefor  the  authority  of 
man,  human,  fallible,  blasphemous  and  bent  on  the 
destruction  of  the  Christian  Creed  and  of  Divine  faith. 
Through  the  fluctuations  of  passion  and  the  incon- 
sistencies of  the  human  intellect,  divisions  and  parties 
and  sects  began  to  abound  on  all  sides  as  a  result  of 
widely  different  interpretations  until  the  Inspired 
Word  of  God,  made  the  text-book  of  party  strife,  lost 
all  its  Divine  character  and  sank  to  the  level  of  the 
human  mind. 

The  work  begun  by  Luther  was  followed  up  with 
ardor  by  those  whom  he  led  into  rebellion  against  the 
Church.  Beza,  Zwingle,  Calvin  and  a  host  of  other 
malcontents  claimed  the  same  powder  and  authority 
as  Luther,  to  be  supreme  judges  of  the  interpretation 
and  meaning  of  the  Scriptures.  In  their  hands  the 
Bible,  without  note  or  comment,  without  an  infallible 
voice  to  which  men  may  listen,  became  the  fruitful 
source  of  disunion,  the  foundation  of  enormous  and 
conflicting  errors,  and  the  destroyer  one  by  one  of 
nearly  all  the  principal  truths  of  revealed  religion.  It 
is  really  painful  to  read  the  lamentations  of  the  Protes- 
tant writers  of  those  days  over  the  utter  and  inextri- 
cable confusion  in  which  nearly  every  doctrinal  sub- 
ject had  been  involved  by  the  disputes  and  conten- 
tions consequent  upon  the  introduction  of  the  indi- 
vidual interpretation  of  the  Bible.  "So  great"  writes 
the  learned  Christopher  Fischer,  superintendent  of 
Smalkald,  "are  the  corruptions,  falsifications  and  scan- 
dalous contentions,  which,  like  a  fearful  deluge,  over- 
spread the  land,  and  afflict,  disturb,  mislead  and  per- 
plex poor,  simple,  common  men  not  deeply  read  in 
Scriptures,  that  one  Is  completely  bewildered  as  to 
what  side  Is  right  and  to  which  he  should  give  his 
adhesion."    An  equally  unimpeachable  witness  of  the 


Luther  and  the  Bible  213 

same  period  admits  that  ''so  great,  on  the  part  of 
most  people,  is  the  contempt  of  religion,  the  neglect 
of  piety  and  the  trampling  down  of  virtue,  that  they 
would  seem  not  to  be  Christians,  nothing  but  down- 
right savage  barbarians." 

Luther  sowed  the  wind  and  reaped  the  whirlwind. 
He  saw  the  miseries  of  the  distracted  Reformation  he 
brought  into  life  and  was  plunged  into  the  deepest 
despair.  Losing  all  control  of  himself,  he  would  at 
times  berate  with  severest,  even  unbecoming  language, 
all  who  dared  to  put  into  practice  the  principle  of 
private  judgment.  In  one  of  his  frequent  exhibitions  of 
temper  he  cried  out :  ''How  many  doctors  have  I  made 
by  preaching  and  writing!  Now  they  say,  Be  off  with 
you.  Go  off  with  you.  Go  to  the  devil.  Thus  it  must 
be.  When  we  preach  they  laugh.  . . .  When  we  get  angry 
and  threaten  them,  they  mock  us,  snap  their  fingers  at 
us  and  laugh  in  their  sleeves."  (Walch  Vll.  2^10.) 
What  other  treatment  could  he  expect  ?  He  taught  them 
to  decide  for  themselves  the  meaning  of  the  Bible,  and 
as  his  teaching  led  to  the  creation  of  as  many  creeds 
as  there  were  intlividuals,  he  had  none  to  blame  but 
himself.  According  to  his  own  principle  the  opinions 
of  any  of  the  rabble  were  as  good  as  his  in  finding 
out  their  faith  and  in  the  interpretation  of  the  Scrip- 
ture. When  he  did  away  with  Divine  authority  and 
rejected  a  Divine  witness  in  dealing  with  the  Bible, 
it  ill  became  him  to  lecture  his  own  children  for  imitat- 
ing his  example. 

"There  is  no  smearer,"  he  said,  "but  when  he  has 
heard  a  sermon  or  can  read  a  chapter  in  German, 
makes  a  doctor  of  himself  and  crowns  his  ass  and 
convinces  himself  that  he  knows  everything  better  than 
all  who  teach  him."  (Walch  V.  1652.)  "When  we 
have  heard  or  learned  a  few  things  about  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, we  think  we  are  already  doctors  and  have  swal- 
lowed the  Holy  Ghost,  feathers  and  all."  (Walch  V. 
472.)  Mark  how  this  erratic  man  speaks  of  the  third 
person  of  the  Blessed  and  Adorable  Trinity.  Will  the 
Bible  Christian  approve   the  blasphemous   language? 


214  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Does  this  show  his  mouth  was  the  mouth  of  Christ? 
We  will  not  wait  for  an  answer  as  we  would  learn 
more  fiom  Luther  concerning  the  failure  of  his  cher- 
ished teaching.  "This  one,"  he  says,  ''will  not  hear 
of  baptism,  that  one  denies  the  sacrament,  another  puts 
a  world  between  this  and  the  last  day :  some  teach 
that  Christ  is  not  God,  some  say  this,  some  say  that: 
there  are  about  as  many  sects  and  creeds  as  there  are 
heads.  No  yokel  is  so  rude,  but  when  he  has  dreams 
and  fancies,  he  thinks  himself  inspired  by  the  Holy 
Ghost  and  must  be  a  prophet/'  (D3  Wette  III,  61.) 
Seeing  his  power  and  authority  to  control  the  masses 
gone,  he  now  in  a  spirit  of  disappointment  sarcas- 
tically remarks :  "Noblemen,  townsmen,  peasants,  all 
classes  understand  the  Evangelium  better  than  I  or  St. 
Paul;  they  are  now  wise  and  think  themselves  more 
learned  than  all  the  ministers."  (Walch  XIV,  1360.) 
Thus  Luther  himself  testifies  to  the  utter  failure  of 
the  cardinal  principle  of  his  so-called  Reformation. 

As  early  as  1523,  when  Carl  von  Bodmann  heard 
that  Luther  declared  the  Bible's  authority  is  to  be 
recognized  as  far  only  as  it  agrees  with  one's  "ipirit," 
he  asked  the  very  pertinent  question :  "What  will  be 
the  consequences  of  the  Reformer's  principle  about 
the  interpretation  and  value  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures? 
He  rejects  this  book  and  that  as  not  apostolic,  as 
spurious,  because  it  does  not  agree  w^ith  his  spirit. 
Other  people  will  reject  other  books  for  the  same  rea- 
sons and  finally  they  will  not  believe  in  the  Bible  at 
all  and  will  treat  like  any  profane  book." 

Von  Bodmann's  words  seemed  to  have  in  them  the 
ring  of  prophecy.  The  outlook  for  the  honor,  dig- 
nity and  authority  of  the  Bible  among  the  followers 
of  the  Reformer  was  indeed  gloomy.  Luther  saw  the 
injurious  results  o:'^  his  principle  of  private  interpreta- 
tion. Depressed  by  the  thoughts  of  what  the  future 
would  unfold,  he  said  to  Melanchthon  one  day  whilst 
at  table :  "There  will  be  the  greatest  confusion. 
Nobody  will  allow  himself  to  be  led  by  another  man's 
doctrine   or  authority.     Everybody  will  be  his   own 


Luther  and  the  Bible  215 

rabbi:  hence  the  greatest  scandals."  (Lanterb.  91.) 
Just  so.  He  opened  the  floodgates  of  infidehty  and 
nothing  but  ruin  and  disaster  to  countless  souls  might 
be  expected  in  consequence. 

Luther's  system  contained  in  itself  the  germs  of 
infideHty  and  paved  the  way  for  the  Rationalists  who 
in  Germany,  hardly  surpass  their  master.  Every  one 
knows  what  the  general  influence  of  the  Reformation 
on  Biblical  studies  in  Germany  has  been.  The  Ration- 
alism which  it  generated  prevails  still  to  an  alarm- 
ing extent  throughout  almost  the  whole  of  the  first 
theatre  of  Protestantism  and  is  daily  working  havoc 
amongst  all  classes.  "This  system,"  as  Spalding 
says,  "which  is  little  better  than  downright  Deism, 
has  frittered  away  t'^.e  very  substance  of  Christianity. 
The  inspiration  of  the  Bible  itself,  the  integrity  of 
its  canon,  the  truth  of  its  numerous  and  clearly  attested 
miracles,  the  Divinity  and  even  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  and  the  existence  of  grace,  and  everything 
supernatural  in  religion  have  all  fallen  before  the 
Juggernaut-car  like  of  modern  German  Protestant 
exegesis  or  system  of  interpretation.  The  Rational- 
ists of  Germany  have  left  nothing  of  Christianity, 
scarcely  even  its  lifeless  skeleton.  They  boldly  and 
unblushingly  proclaim  their  infidel  principles  through 
the  press,  from  the  professor's  chair  and  from  the 
pulpit.  And  the  most  learned  and  distinguished  among 
the  present  German  Protestant  clergy  have  openly  em- 
braced this  infidel  system.  Whoever  doubts  the  en- 
tire accuracy  of  this  picture  of  modern  German  Prot- 
estantism, needs  only  open  the  works  of  Semmler, 
Damon,  Paulus,  Strauss,  Eichorn,  Michaelis,  Teuer- 
bach,  Bretschneider,  Wo'tman,  and  others." 

The  following  extract  from  the  sermons  of  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Rose,  a  learned  divine  of  the  Church  of  England, 
presf^nts  a  graphic  sketch  of  these  German  Rational- 
ists :  "They  are  bound  by  no  law,  but  their  own  fancies  ; 
some  are  m'^re  and  some  are  less  extravagant;  but  I 
do  them  no  injustice  after  this  declaration  in  saying, 
that   the  general   inclination   and   tendency   of   their 


216  The  Facts  About  Luther 

opinions  (more  or  less  forcibly  acted  on)  is  this:  That 
in  the  New  Testament,  we  shall  find  only  the  opiniotis 
of  Christ  and  the  Apostles  adapted  to  the  age  in  which 
they  lived,  and  not  eternal  truths:  that  Christ  Him- 
self had  neither  the  design  nor  the  power  of  teach- 
mg  any  system  which  was  to  endure;  that  when  He 
taught  any  enduring  truth,  as  He  occasionally  did,  it 
was  without  being  aware  of  its  nature ;  that  the  Apos- 
tles understood  still  less  of  real  religion;  that  the 
whole  doctrine  both  of  Christ  and  the  Apostles,  as  it 
was  directed  to  the  Jews  alone,  so  it  was  gathered 
from  no  other  source  than  the  Jewish  philosophy ;  that 
Christ  Himself  erred  ( !)  and  His  Apostles  spread  His 
errors,  and  that  consequently  not  one  of  His  doctrines 
is  to  be  received  on  cheir  authority ;  but  that,  with- 
out regard  to  the  authority  of  the  books  of  Scripture 
and  their  asserted  Divine  origin,  each  doctrine  is  to 
be  examined  according  to  the  principles  of  right  reason, 
before  it  is  allowed  to  be  Divine." 

Since  these  words  were  written  some  forty  or  more 
years  ago  the  Higher  Critics  have  multiplied  lo  an 
alarming  extent  and  the  boldness  of  the  extravagancies 
in  which  they  constantly  indulge  in  regard  to  the  treat- 
ment of  the  Inspired  Word  is  a  scandal  to  all  lovers 
of  the  Bible.  The  Scriptures  in  their  estimation  are 
no  more  sacred  than  any  other  writings.  They  not 
only  subject  them  to  the  most  unreasoning  criticism 
but  strive  by  every  means  known  to  erratic  and  un- 
scientific minds  to  question  their  inspiration,  under- 
mine their  authority  and  underestimate  their  saving 
teachings.  Too  proud  to  ''stand  in  the  old  paths"  des- 
ignated by  Mother  Church,  they  take  to  the  "new  one 
struc'-  out  by  Luther"  and  with  private  judgment  for 
guide  and  under  the  guise  of  libert}*  of  thought,  they 
attack  the  "open  Bible,"  now  exposed  to  the  vagaries, 
passions  and  humors  of  individual  readers,  and  not 
only  abuse  but  despoil  and  strip  it  of  its  ancien*  beauty, 
sacredness  and  authority.  How  could  an  "open  Bible," 
with  a  perception  of  it  hermetically  sealed,  and  an 
erring  "private  judgment"  meet  with  other  than  de- 


Luther  and  the  Bible  217 

struction  and  lead  to  "perdition?"  as  St.  Peter  de- 
clares. F'rom  a  book  of  life,  they  make  it  a  book 
of  death.  They  vaunt  their  zeal  for  it  only  to  compass 
in  its  rejection. 

As  we  recall  the  extraordinary  and  almost  incredi- 
ble developments  of  the  principle  of  private  judgment, 
which  supports  a  hundred  contradictory  systems  of 
religion,  we  are  forcibly  reminded  of  what  St.  Paul 
writes  of  the  ancient  philosophers,  that  they  "became 
vain  in  their  thoughts"  and  "thinking  themselves  wise 
became  fools."  The  sad  aberrations  of  the  so-called 
learned  bibliomaniacs  of  the  various  countries  fur- 
nish palpable  evidence  of  the  necessity  of  a  Divinely 
appointed  guide  in  religious  matters. 

The  Bible  manifestly  contains  and  teaches  but  one 
religion.  Truth  is  but  one.  There  is  but  one  revela- 
tion and,  therefore,  but  one  true  interpretation  of  that 
volume  which  is  its  record.  The  Catholic  Church, 
which  existed  before  the  Bible,  which  made  the  Bible, 
which  selected  the  books  and  settled  and  closed  the 
Canon  of  Holy  Scriptures,  has  alone  in  her  posses- 
sion the  key  to  the  true  meaning  of  the  Sacred  Orachs 
of  which  she  was  the  guardian  in  all  ages  and  under 
all  circumstances.  The  same  Holy  Spirit  which 
founded  the  Church  and  inspired  the  Scriptures,  made 
her  the  authorized  interpreter  of  the  Divine  Word 
and  the  same  Holy  Spirit,  as  He  promised,  has  ever 
abided  in  her  to  guard  and  protect  from  all  possi- 
bility of  error  in  penetrating  and  expounding  the  book 
of  life  and  salvation.  God  could  not  do  less  than  safe- 
guard His  work.  He  would  not  have  His  children 
"tossed  to  and  fro  and  carried  about  by  every  wind 
of  doctrine,  in  the  wickedness  of  mon,  in  craftiness, 
by  which  they  lie  in  wait  to  deceive."  Ephes.  IV.,  14. 
God  therefore  established  the  Chr^ch  to  be  a  wit- 
ness to  His  revelation.  He  made  her  the  external  and 
infallible  authority  to  declare  that  the  Bi^le  is  His 
Word  and  is  inspired  by  Him.  V/ith  the  Church 
the  Bible  is  a  book  of  life.  Her  infallible  interpreta- 
tion guarantees  unhesitating  certainty  in  all  matters 


218  The  Facts  About  Luther 

of  faith  and  morals,  that  peace  and  not  dissension, 
certainty  and  not  confusion,  unity  and  not  division  may 
prevail  amongst  men  of  good  will.  Without  this 
Church  there  is  no  witness  to  the  revelation  or  re- 
demption of  Christ  and  no  other  Divinely  constituted 
teacher  of  the  Word  of  God. 

To-day  there  are  outside  the  Catholic  Church  num- 
bers of  good,  plain,  intelligent  men  who  love  Divine 
truth  and  are  anxious  to  know  it  as  it  was  announced 
in  the  beginning  by  the  Master  in  all  fullness  and 
perfection.  They  love  the  Bible,  but  have  grown  tired 
of  being  tossed  about  by  every  wind  of  doctrine  as 
set  in  motion  by  any  new  fledged  divine  with  a 
superficial  education  who  imagines  that  he  has  re- 
ceived a  call  from  heaven  to  inaugurate  a  new  re- 
ligion. They  know  that  in  the  Scriptures  there  "are 
some  things  hard  to  understand,"  ''that  many  wrest 
them  to  their  own  perdition"  and  that  they  do  not 
contain  all  the  truths  necessary  for  salvation.  They 
feel  that  the  Scriptures  alone  cannot  be  a  sufficient 
guide  and  rule  of  faith,  because  they  cannot,  at  any 
time,  be  within  the  reach  of  every  inquirer.  They 
know  it  is  impossible  for  any  one  to  learn  his  faith 
from  the  Bible  alone.  The  feeling  grows  on  them 
that  their  edition  of  the  Bible  has  been  mutilated,  that 
it  has  been  tampered  with,  that  it  has  rejected  what 
the  Holy  Ghost  has  dictated,  that  it  has  deliberately 
cut  out  what  God  had  put  in.  Then  they  recall  the 
solemn  warning  contained  in  the  closing  words  of  the 
Apocalypse:  *Tf  any  man  shall  take  away  from  the 
words  of  the  book  of  this  prophecy,  God  shall  take 
away  his  part  out  of  the  book  of  life  and  out  of  the 
Holy  City  and  from  these  things  that  are  written  in 
this  book."  The  arbitrary  act  of  the  reformers  in 
changing  the  Word  of  God  fills  them,  as  well  it  might, 
with  horror  and  distrust.  They  must  not,  however,  be 
discouraged.  They  must  learn  to  put  aside  their  old 
time  prejudices  and  arouse  their  perceptions  to  see  that 
what  they  call  "the  Church  of  Rome,"  which  they 
were  taught  hated  the  Bible,  is  indeed  the  Church  of 


Luther  and  the  Bible  219 

Jesns  of  Nazareth  and  holds  sacred  and  uncorrupted 
every  verse  of  the  Gospel.  They  must  be  taught  that 
all  who  would  know  God,  and  who  would  learn  what 
God  is,  in  all  His  beauty  and  His  truth,  must  know 
Him  in  His  Incarnate  Son  and  humbly  follow  the 
solemn  command  '*to  hear  the  Church,"  which  He 
made  "the  pillar  and  ground  of  truth,"  under  the  awful 
penalty  of  being  reckoned  "with  heathens  and  pub- 
licans." 

Once  this  Voice  is  recognized,  as  right  reason  and 
faith  demand,  men  of  good-will,  earnest  and  sincere, 
will  become  filled  with  the  sure  knowledge  of  God  and 
His  revelation,  as  it  is  in  Christ  and  His  Church,  and 
peace  shall  possess  their  souls.  They  will  return  to 
the  Church  of  their  fathers  whence  they  were  beguiled 
by  the  false  teachings  of  unscrupulous  and  crafty  men, 
and  discover  that  whilst  she  fearlessly  leaves  the 
whole  Scriptures  as  they  were  given  her  in  the  begin- 
ning in  their  original,  untouched  majesty,  yet  she 
pours  upon  them  a  full  stream  of  light  which  draws 
out  into  life  and  beauty  and  salvation  their  minutest 
shades  of  meaning — a  light  which  they  have  sought  in 
vain  to  draw  from  Luther  and  his  erroneous  prin- 
ciples of  Biblical  interpretation. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion 

LUTHER  was  a  regularly  ordained  priest  of  the 
Catholic  Church  and  ''his  lips",  according  to  Holy 
Writ,  should  "keep  knowledge"  for  all  who  would  "seek 
the  law  at  his  mouth ;  because  he  is  the  angel  of  the  Lord 
of  Hosts."  In  assuming  the  sacred  office  of  the  priest- 
hood, his  mission  was  not  only  to  the  religious,  but  to 
the  social  order,  for  both  are  from  God  their  Founder. 
Like  all  priests  before  and  after  his  time,  he  understood 
that  his  duty  was  not  only  to  acquire,  but  to  keep  that 
knowledge  which  was  necessary  for  all  who  sought  the 
law  at  his  mouth  in  order  to  teach  the  things  men 
should  render  to  God  and  the  things  they  should  render 
to  Caesar.  The  mission  of  the  priest,  as  the  keeper  and 
expositor  of  Divine  knowledge  and  heavenly  truth,  is 
not  merely  to  the  individual,  but  to  the  nation  in 
its  corporate  capacity.  This  was  manifestly  the  will 
and  the  design  of  Christ  when  He  commissioned  His 
Apostles  "to  go  and  teach  the  nations  all  things  whatso- 
ever He  had  commanded."  This  Gospel  embodies  all 
knowledge  and  all  truth,  and  its  message,  which  is  one 
of  peace  and  good  will,  is  intended  to  promote  among 
the  peoples  the  blessings  of  tranquility,  good  feeling 
and  fraternal  union. 

"Anointed,"  as  Luther  was,  "to  preach  the  Gospel 
of  peace,"  and  commissioned  to  communicate  to  all  the 
knowledge  which  uplifts,  sanctifies  and  saves,  it  is 
certainly  pertinent  to  ask  what  was  his  attitude  to  the 
ministry  of  the  Divine  word,  and  in  what  manner  did 
he  show  by  speech  and  behavior  the  heavenly  sanc- 
tions of  law,  Divine,  international  and  social? 

As  we  draw  near  this  man  and  carefully  examine 
his  career  we  find  that  in  an  evil  moment  he  abandoned 
the  spirit  of  discipline,  became  a  pursuer  of  novelty, 
and  put  on  the  ways  and  the  manners  of  the  "wolf  in 
sheep's  clothing"  whose  teeth  and  claws  rent  asunder 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  221 

the    seamless    garment   of    Divine    knowledge    which 
should  have  been  kept  whole  for  the  instruction  and  the 
comfort  of  all  who  were  to  seek  the  law  at  his  lips. 
His  words  lost  their  savor  and  influence  for  good,  and 
only  foulness  and  mocking  blaspheii^y  filled  his  mouth, 
to  deceive  the  ignorant  and  lead  them  into  error,  license 
.and  rebellion  against  both  Church  and  State.    Out  of 
the  abundance  of  a  corrupt  heart  this  fallen  priest,  who 
had  departed  from  the  Divine  source  of  that  knowledge 
which  is  unto  peace,  shamelessly  advanced  theories  and 
principles  which  cut  at  the  root  of  all  order,  authority 
and  obedience,  and  inaugurated  an  antogonism  and  a 
disregard  for  the  sanctity  of  law  such  as  the  world 
had  not  known  since  pagan  times.     His  Gospel  was 
not  that  of  the  Apostles  who  issued  from  the  upper 
room   of   Jerusalem  in  the  power  of   those   ''parted 
tongues,  as  it  were  of  fire."    His  doctrine  stript  of  its 
cunning  and  deceit,  was  nothing  else,  to  use  the  words 
of  St.  James  describing  false  teaching,  but  "earthly, 
sensual,  devilish" ;  so  much  so,  that  men  of  good  sense 
could  no  longer  safely  ''seek  the  law  at  his  mouth" 
and  honestly  recognize  him  as  ''the  angel  of  the  Lord 
of  Hosts"  sent  with  instructions  for  the  good  of  the 
flock  and  the  peace  of  the  nations.     Opposed  to  all 
law,  order,  and  restraint  he  could  not  but  disgrace  his 
ministry,  proclaim  his  own  shame,  and  prove  to  every 
wise  and  discerning  follower  of  the  true  Gospel  of 
peace,  the  groundlessness  of  his  boastful  claims  to  be 
in  any  proper  sense  a  benefactor  of  society,  an  up- 
holder of  constituted  authority  and  a  promoter  of  the 
best  interests  of  humanity. 

Luther,  like  many  another  framer  of  religious  and 
political  heresy,  may  have  begun  his  course  blindly 
and  with  little  serious  reflection.  He  may  have  never 
stopped  to  estimate  the  lamentable  and  disastrous 
results  to  which  his  heretofore  unheard-of  propaganda 
would  inevitably  lead.  He  m.ay  not  have  directly 
intended  the  ruin,  desolation  and  misery  which  his 
seditious  preaching  effected  in  all  directions.  "But," 
as  Verres  aptly  says,  "if  a  man  standing  on  one  of  the 
snow  capped  giants  of  the  Alps  were  to  roll  down  a 


2t2  The  Facts  About  Luther 

little  stone,  knowinr'  what  consequences  would  follow, 
he  would  be  answerable  for  the  desolation  caused  by 
the  avalanche  in  the  valley  below.  Luther  put  into 
motion  not  one  little  stone,  but  rock  after  rock,  and  he 
must  have  been  shortsighted  indeed  or  his  blind  hatred 
made  him  so,  if  he  was  unable  to  estimate  beforehand 
what  effect  his  inflammatory  appeals  to  the  masses  of 
the  people  and  his  wild  denunciations  of  law  and  order 
would  have."  He  should,  as  a  matter  of  course,  have 
weighed  well  and  thoroughly  the  merits  or  demerits  of 
his  "new  gospel"  before  he  announced  it  to  an  undis- 
criminating  public,  and  wittingly  or  unwittingly  un- 
barred the  floodgates  of  confusion  and  unrest.  Deliber- 
ation., however,  was  a  process  little  known  to  this  man 
of  many  moods  and  violent  temper.  To  secure  victory 
in  his  quarrel  with  the  Church  absorbed  his  attention 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  else,  and,  although  he  may  not 
have  reflected  in  time  on  the  effects  of  his  revolutionary 
teachings  he  is  none  the  less  largely  responsible  for  the 
religious,  political  and  social  upheaval  of  his  day, 
which  his  wild  and  passionate  harangues  fomented 
and  precipitated.  Nothing  short  of  a  miracle  could 
prevent  his  reckless,  persistent  and  unsparing  denun- 
ciations of  authority  and  its  representatives  from 
undermining  the  supports  by  which  order  and  dis- 
cipline in  Church  and  State  were  upheld.  As  events 
proved,  his  wild  words,  flung  about  in  reckless  pro- 
fusion, fell  into  souls  full  of  the  fermenting  passions 
of  the  time  and  turned  Germany  into  a  land  of  misery, 
darkness  and  disorder. 

Luther  conceived  himself  to  be  a  religious  teacher 
of  no  ordinary  standing.  In  his  self-exploitation,  he 
time  and  time  again  boasted  that  "his  word  was  the 
word  of  Christ"  and  that  *'his  mouth  was  the  mouth  of 
Christ."  Holy  Writ  tells  us  that  "the  words  of  the 
Lord  are  pure  words  ;  as  silver  tried  by  the  fire,  purified 
from  the  earth,  refined  seven  times" ;  but  the  great 
biblical  scholar  Luther  imagined  himself  to  be  must  not 
have  been  acquainted  with  this  pronouncement,  for 
we  find  in  his  utterances  on  all  vital  religious  and  social 
questions  such  falsity  and  rudeness  of  speech  as  were 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  223' 

never  before  voiced  by  the  most  depraved  of  mortals. 
His  mouth  could  hardly  be  the  mouth  of  Christ,  as 
he  claimed,  for  we  find  it  most  unbecomingly  glorying 
in  holding  up  all  things  holy,  sacred  and  venerable  to 
unceasing  ridicule  and  scorn.  As  all  who  are  familiar 
with  his  utterances  know,  he  roared  like  an  enraged 
animal  against  the  Church  which  the  Master  founded, 
and  impudently  declared  her  *'to  be  the  jaws  of  hell, 
kept  wide  open  by  the  anger  of  God."  In  the  vilest 
and  bitterest  terms  he  denounced  the  head  of  the 
Church,  who  governed  in  Peter's  place,  and  asserted 
him  to  be  "Antichrist,"  "the  man  of  sin,"  "the  general 
heresiarch,"  "the  chief  of  all  heresies,"  and  the  one 
who  "deserved  to  be  torn  in  pieces  wuth  hot  glim- 
mering pincers."  Nor  was  he  more  respectful  towards 
the  episcopate  of  the  Catholic  Church,  against  which  he 
declaimed  like  a  madman.  If  you  consult  his  "Treatise 
against  the  Priestly  Hierarchy"  you  will  discover  for 
yourself  how  he  indulges  in  the  very  wildest  expression 
of  passionate  abuse  against  the  sacrament  of  Holy 
Orders.  Ulenberg  says  this  incendiary  volume  has  the 
appearance  of  being  written  "not  with  ink,  but  with 
human  blood."  In  this  work  Luther  is  not  ashamed  to 
call  the  successors  of  the  Apostles  "hobgoblins  of  the 
devil,"  and  because  they  would  not  adopt  and  follow 
his  teaching  he  wanted  them  "wiped  off  the  face  of 
the  earth  in  a  great  rising."  "Whoever,"  he  cries  out, 
"shall  assist  and  lend  his  personal  influence,  means  and 
reputation  that  the  episcopate  be  destroyed  and  the  rule 
of  bishops  exterminated,  is  a  beloved  son  of  God,  a 
true  Christian,  an  observer  of  God's  commandments 
and  wars  against  the  ordinance  of  the  devil."  Decency 
prevents  us  from  quoting  further  from  this  malicious 
work  written  to  weaken  and  destroy  the  very  order  to 
which  its  author  was  indebted  for  his  priesthood. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  only  one  who  had  fallen  from  the 
grace  of  his  state  could  thus  recklessly  encourage  the 
destruction  of  the  episcopate  and  openly  commend 
sacrilege  and  murder  as  means  for  the  mob  to  become, 
as  he  declares,  "the  true  sons  of  God  and  the  right 
kind  of  Christians."    It  is  almost  unthinkable  that  any 


224  The  Facts  About  Luther 

one  using  this  passionate  and  extravagant  language 
would  dare  insist  that  "his  mouth  was  the  mouth  of 
Christ,"  and  yet  Luther  was  so  persuaded  of  it  that 
he  prophesied  that  *'if  his  gospel  is  preached  but  for 
two  years,  then  Pope,  bishops,  cardinals,  priests,  monks, 
nuns,  bells,  bell-towers,  masses  .  .  .  rules,  statues  and 
all  the  riff-raff  of  the  Papal  government  will  have 
vanished  like  smoke."  The  prediction,  as  might  be 
expected,  was  never  fulfilled.  The  Church  went  on 
calmly  and  serenely  in  the  discharge  of  her  heavenly 
mission  as  if  the  false  prophet  and  his  sateUites  had 
never  existed. 

The  tirades  which  Luther  hurled  incessantly  against 
the  Church  and  her  ministers  were  only  preludes  to 
those  he  aimed  against  secular  government  and  its 
legitimate  representatives.  The  seeds  of  discord  he 
so  lavishly  sowed  in  the  soil  of  the  Church  were 
gradually  but  effectively  introduced  into  that  of  the 
State.  It  could  not  be  otherwise.  He  was  naturally 
of  a  belligerent  temperament  and  an  enemy  to  all 
existing  institutions,  laws  and  ordinances  that  were 
not  in  agreement  with  his  ever  changing  policies.  The 
most  cursory  examination  of  what  he  called  his  "new 
gospel"  proclaims  this  characteristic  and  shows  most 
convincingly  the  mighty  difference  existing  between 
its  spirit  and  that  announced  by  the  primitive  Church. 
In  its  every  line  is  written  large  the  grant  of  liberty 
to  violate  all  law  and  to  disregard  all  authority  save 
his  own.  Did  he  not  set  the  example  of  disobedience 
to  legitimate  rule  by  rejecting  the  authority  of  the  head 
of  the  Church  and  declaring,  "Popery  is  an  institution 
of  the  devil?"  Did  he  not  spurn  God  Himself  when 
he  admitted  the  authority  of  the  devil  who  "argued 
in  favor  of  his  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  alone 
and  against  Mary  and  the  Saints?"  Did  he  not, 
without  warrant  or  proof,  proclaim  his  own  authority 
as  that  of  an  Evangelist,  who  was  not  even  to  be  judged 
bv  an  Angel?  Did  he  not  reject  several  portions  of 
the  inspired  Word  of  God  and  falsify  others  by  addi- 
tions and   suppressions   to   make   them   express   liis 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  225 

teaching  of  justification  by  faith  alone?  Did  he  not 
show  throughout  his  excommunicated  career  the  utmost 
recklessness  concerning  the  most  fundamental  laws  of 
God  and  an  insufferable  arrogance  and  intolerance 
towards  all  who  refused  to  submit  to  his  dictation? 
Did  he  not  maintain  that  the  poor  man  **has  ample 
reason  to  break  forth  with  the  flail  and  the  club"  and 
when  the  peasants  did  break  forth  with  the  flail  and 
the  club  and  his  advice  to  lay  these  down  was  ignored, 
did  he  not  order  everybody  ''to  strike  in  ....  to 
strangle  and  stab,  secretly  or  openly — for  in  the  case 
of  a  man  in  open  rebellion  everybody  is  both  chief 
justice  and  executioner  ?" 

In  Luther's  estimation  his  "new  gospel,'*  which  was 
a  gospel  of  rebellion  and  not  of  law  and  order,  was 
paramount  to  all  else.  He  wanted  it  with  all  its 
incendiarism  to  be  made  known  and  proclaimed  in  all 
directions.  In  supplicating  his  f  ellov/  rebels  to  "spread 
and  aid  others  to  spread  his  new  gospel,"  he  exhorted 
all  to  be  mindful  in  carrying  out  his  designs  to  "teach, 
write  and  preach  that  all  human  establishments  are 
vain."  (See  Hazlitt  p.  375.)  This  was  his  ultimatum 
and  none  in  the  community  must  be  at  hberty  to  dis- 
regard or  ignore  it.  In  case  any  were  found  bold 
enough  to  oppose  the  spread  of  the  new  gospel,  he 
ordered  that  they  should  be  treated  with  the  utmost 
severity.  No  quarter  was  to  be  given  to  the  violators 
of  his  commands.  He  decreed  in  the  most  dictatorial 
manner  that  all  who  opposed  his  religious  program 
were  to  be  "denied  all  rights,  all  power,  all  authority 
and  like  wolves  were  to  be  shunned  and  avoided." 
Imagining  himself  to  be  the  sole  keeper  of  all  heavenly 
blessings,  he  promised  in  his  famous  "Bull,"  "the  grace 
of  God  as  a  reward  to  all  who  would  observe  and  carry 
out"  his  new  and  rebellious  injunctions. 

To  respect,  honor  and  obey  legitimate  authority, 
whether  ecclesiastical  or  civil,  had  always  been  a  sacred 
precept  of  the  Catholic  Church.  With  St.  Paul  she 
ever  proclaimed  what  he  wrote  to  Titus:  "Admonish 
them  to  be  subject  to  authorities  and  powers,  and  to 


226  The  Facts  About  Luther 

obey  at  a  word;  to  be  ready  in  every  good  work,  to 
speak  evil  of  no  man,  not  to  be  litigious,  but  gentle, 
showing  all  mildness  to  all  men."  For  centuries  the 
Church  upheld  by  word  and  work  the  heavenly  sanc- 
tions of  law  and  order  and  whether  men  would  hear, 
or  whether  they  would  forbear,  her  voice  has  ever  been 
true  to  that  of  the  Master  who  said :  'The  Scribes  and 
the  Pharisees  have  sat  in  the  chair  of  Moses.  All 
things,  therefore,  whatsoever  they  shall  say  to  you, 
observe  and  do,  but  according  to  their  works  do  ye  not ; 
for  they  say  and  do  not."  St.  Matt,  xxiii,  2,  3.  Obe- 
dience to  the  State  is  not  an  institution  of  modern 
establishment,  nor  is  it  not  solely  one  of  man's  estab- 
lishment. Obedience  to  law,  obedience  to  the  repre- 
sentative of  law,  to  Caesar,  is  a  Divine  institution,  for 
God  Himself  taught  respect  for  civil  authority  when 
He  bade  the  Pharisees,  "Render  to  Caesar  the  things 
that  are  Caesar's,  and  to  God  the  things  that  are 
God's."  Civil  allegiance  was  thus  raised  from  a  mere 
spiritual  obedience  to  a  meretorious  obedience,  one 
which  demanded  for  the  law  and  which  brought  its 
own  rewards  and  punishments.  It  created  a  new  type 
of  citizenship  founded  upon  law  and  order  and  abso- 
lute obedience.  God's  way  is  the  way  of  discipline, 
of  order  and  of  respect  for  dominion,  and  His  Church 
will  not  suffer  departure  therefrom  in  dealing  with 
legitimate  authority  even  when  exercised  by  a  Nero  or 
by  any  of  his  cruel  imitators.  Luther,  as  might  be 
expected  from  his  revolutionary  tendencies,  set  him- 
self very  distinctly  against  this  supernatural  teaching 
and,  in  spite  of  all  evangelical  injunctions,  followed 
his  own  way;  and  that  way  was  to  decry  law,  preach 
sedition  and  heap  abuse  upon  the  rightful  represent- 
atives of  authority,  civil  and  ecclesiastical. 

In  the  second  part  of  a  work  he  wrote  *'0n  Author- 
ity, etc."  he  expresses  his  views  on  the  extent  to  which 
men  are  obliged  to  obey.  To  the  question,  "How  far 
does  worldly  authority  extend?"  he  repHes  in  this 
strange  manner :  "But  do  you  want  to  know  why  God 
has  ordained  that  the  temporal  princes  should  make 
such  shameful  mistakes?     I  will  tell  you.     God  has 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  227 

handed  them  over  to  their  wicked  heart  and  will  make 
an  end  to  them."  In  the  same  work  he  raises  the 
objection:  "There  must  be  an  authority  even  among 
Christians,"  and  his  answer  is,  ''Among  Christians 
there  ought  not  to  be  and  there  cannot  be  any  authority. 
But  they  are  all  at  the  same  time  subject  one  to 
another." 

This  v/as  a  pet  doctrine  of  Luther  and  while  its 
wicked  teaching  is  most  untenable  and  anarchical,  it 
need  not  surprise  any  one  who  is  in  the  least  familiar 
with  his  revolutionary  tendencies.  It  was  characteristic 
of  hrm  to  "despise  dominion  and  blaspheme  majesty" 
and,  as  he  constantly  set  himself  against  all  law,  re- 
straint and  ordinance,  he  could  not  consistently  do 
otherwise  than  declare  that  "there  ought  not  to  be  and 
there  cannot  be  any  authority."  What  dire  results  this 
wicked  teaching  brought  to  Church  and  State  ever  since 
it  was  first  announced  would  require  volumes  to  record. 

This  open  profession  of  the  doctrine  of  license  led 
Luther  to  exemplify  it  in  his  own  behavior.  Every 
opportunity  was  seized  upon  to  show  his  contempt  for 
dominion.  He  took  a  special  delight  in  holding  up  the 
representatives  of  authority  to  ridicule  and  in  exposing 
their  faults,  real  or  imaginary,  in  the  most  glaring 
colors  till  disregard  for  dominion  gradually  spread  all 
over  the  country.  Hardly  a  ruler  of  the  period  escaped 
his  railing  speech.  Unmindful  of  St.  Paul's  wise  advice 
"not  to  be  litigious  but  gentle,"  he  denounced  the 
reigning  Emperor  as  a  "tyrant"  and  called  him  "a 
mortal  sack  of  worms."  "Here,"  he  says,  "you  see 
how  the  poor  mortal  sack  of  worms  (Madensack),  the 
Emperor,  who  is  not  sure  of  his  life  for  a  moment, 
shamelessly  boasts  that  he  is  the  true,  supreme  pro- 
tector of  the  Christian  faith."  (Erlanger  Ausgabe 
XXIV,  210.)  In  a  like  spirit  of  hatred  and  opposition 
he  declared  that  the  princes  were  "mad,  fooHsh,  sense- 
less, raving,  frantic  lunatics."  In  his  work  on 
"Authority,  etc.,"  he  says :  "You  must  know  that  from 
the  beginning  of  the  world  a  wise  prince  is  a  rare  bird, 
and  still  more  so  a  pious  prince;  they  are  generally 


228  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  greatest  fools  or  the  worst  rascals  on  earth; 
therefore,  as  regards  them  we  may  always  look  out 
for  the  worst  and  expect  little  good  from  them.'* 
Addressing  the  princes,  he  says,  "People  cannot,  people 
will  not,  put  up  with  your  tyranny  and  caprice  for  any 
length  of  time."  In  another  work  written  in  1524, 
entitled,  ''Two  Imperial,  Inconsistent  and  Disgusting 
Orders  concerning  Luther/'  the  antagonism  of  the  dis- 
gruntled "Evangelist"  against  the  princes  is  expressed 
in  extremest  bitterness.  He  says :  'Trom  the  bottom 
of  my  heart  I  bewail  such  a  state  of  things  in  the 
hearing  of  all  pious  Christians,  that  like  me  they  may 
bear  with  pity  such  crazy,  stupid,  furious,  mad  fools 
.  .  .  May  God  deliver  us  from  them,  and  out  of  mercy 
give  us  other  rulers.    Amen. 

It  is  evident  from  the  few  quotations  given  above 
that  Luther  believed  in  freedom  of  speech,  which  is  a 
very  good  thing  under  approved  conditions,  but  the  use 
he  made  of  it  was  little  calculated  to  foster  in  the 
people  respect  for  authority  and  willingness  to  obey 
it.  The  fact  is  that  his  wholesale  denunciations  of  the 
Emperor  and  the  other  rulers  of  the  period,  and  his 
unsparing  criticisms  of  existing  conditions,  tended  to 
sow  the  seeds  of  sedition  among  the  discontented  ele- 
ments of  society,  to  promote  a  revolutionary  tendency 
and  to  arouse  into  activity  the  dormant  prejudices  and 
passions  of  the  lower  orders  against  their  rulers. 

The  inflammatory  power  of  the  violent  expressions 
found  in  his  writings  and  addresses  should  never  have 
been  used  unless  he  intended  to  inaugurate  a  rising  of 
the  masses  to  destroy  all  order  and  government.  Eras- 
mus, speaking  of  the  crowds  who  assembled  to  hear 
Luther  and  his  preachers  expound  their  new-fangled 
notions  of  Christian  liberty,  says :  *T  saw  them  coming 
from  these  sermons  with  threatening  looks,  and  eyes 
darting  fire,  as  men  carried  beyond  themselves  by  the 
fiery  discourses  to  which  they  had  just  listened.  These 
followers  of  the  Gospel  are  even  ready  for  a  conflict 
of  some  kind,  whether  with  polemical  or  material 
weapons,  it  matters  little."    (Alzog.  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  219, 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  229 

222.)  Berzold,  a  non-Catholic,  in  his  history  of  the 
German  Reformation  issued  in  1890,  referring  to 
Luther's  violent  productions,  says:  ''He  should  never 
have  written  in  such  a  way  had  he  not  already  made 
up  his  mind  to  act  as  leader  of  a  Revolution.  That  he 
should  have  expected  the  German  nation  of  those  days 
to  listen  to  such  passionate  language  from  the  mouth 
of  its  'Evangelist'  and  'EHas'  without  being  carried 
beyond  the  bounds  of  law  and  order,  was  a  naivete 
only  to  be  explained  by  his  ignorance  of  the  world  and 
his  exclusive  attention  to  religious  interests."  Con- 
cerning the  effects  of  such  language  upon  the  people, 
the  same  historian  wrote  as  late  as  1908:  "How  else 
but  in  a  material  sense  was  the  plain  man  to  interpret 
Luther's  proclamation  of  Christian  freedom  and  his 
extravagant  strictures  on  the  parsons  and  nobles  ?" 

The  evil  consequence  of  holding  up  the  rulers  of  the 
nation  to  ridicule  and  denouncing  them  as  "tyrants" 
and  "persecutors"  did  not  entirely  escape  Luther's  own 
attention.  As  early  as  1522,  in  his  "Advice  to  all 
Christians,  etc.,"  he  writes :  "It  seems  as  if  a  rebellion 
is  going  to  break  out  .  .  .  and  the  whole  clerical  body 
are  about  to  be  murdered  and  driven  out,  if  they  do  not 
prevent  it  by  an  earnest,  visible  change  for  the  better. 
For  the  poor  man,  in  excitement  and  grief  on  account 
of  the  damage  he  has  suffered  in  his  goods,  his  body 
and  his  soul,  has  been  tried  too  much  and  has  been 
oppressed  by  them  beyond  all  measure,  in  the  most 
perfidious  manner.  Henceforth  he  can  and  will  no 
longer  put  up  zvith  such  a  state  of  things,  and,  more- 
over, he  has  ample  reason  to  break  forth  with  the 
Hail  and  the  club  as  Karsthans  threatens  to  do'* 

Luther  did  not  have  long  to  wait  to  see  his  fears 
realized.  The  incentive  to  rebellion,  which  he  had 
long  instigated  and  developed,  was  at  last  realized  in 
the  tremendous  outbreak  of  the  "Peasants'  War," 
which  was  led  by  fanatics  of  Miinzer's  persuasion,  in 
the  year  1525.  The  peasants  were  for  the  most  part 
a  quiet  and  peaceful  class,  and  at  first  had  little  thought 
of  rebelling  against  their  rulers.    They,  suffered  much, 


230  The  Facts  About  Luther 

however,  from  unjust  oppression  which  prevailed  at 
the  time  to  a  large  extent  in  many  parts  of  Germany. 
They  had  many  and  great  grievances  to  endure. 
Naturally  they  wanted  their  complaints  heard,  their 
wrongs  remeaied  and  their  request  for  a  modicum 
share  of  liberty  conceded.  A  manifesto  setting  forth 
their  demands  was  drawn  up  and  scattered  all  over  the 
country.  There  is  little  doubt  that  most  of  what  they 
claimed  was  founded  in  strict  justice  and  might  easily 
have  been  granted  by  the  rulers.  Veeder  says:  "Tiiat 
the  ideals  and  demands  of  the  peasants  were  substan- 
tially just  is  conceded  by  practically  every  modern 
writer  of  the  period  and  is  tacitly  confessed  by  sub- 
sequent legislation  in  Germany,  which  has  virtually 
conceded  every  one  of  their  demands  and  more." 

liie  proposals  of  the  peasants  published  in  the 
"Twelve  Articles"  of  the  ''Manifesto"  give  unmis- 
takable proofs  of  the  religious  character  of  their 
demands  of  justice.  Luther  tells  us  that  what  pleased 
him  best  in  the  Peasants'  Articles  was  their  "readiness 
to  be  guided  by  clear,  plain,  undeniable  passages  of 
Scripture."  It  was  believed  by  those  who  drew  up  the 
petition  for  redress  that  all  the  claims,  even  those 
relating  to  the  tithes,  to  hunting,  fishing,  forest  rights, 
etc.,  could  be  proved  from  Holy  Scripture.  The 
peasants  were  willing  to  be  advised,  but  they  said  they 
would  not  abandon  their  claims  unless  they  were 
refuted  "with  clear,  manifest,  undeniable  texts  of 
Scripture."  The  First  Article  demanded  liberty  to 
preach  the  Gospel  and  the  right  of  congregations  to 
elect  and  depose  their  parish  priests.  The  Third  Article 
declared :  "There  are  to  be  no  serfs,  because  Christ 
has  liberated  us  all.''  In  presenting  their  requests,  they 
at  the  same  time  made  it  plain  that  they  reserved  to 
themselves  the  right  to  make  in  the  future  such  addi- 
tional demands  as  they  might  come  to  recognize  as 
being  in  accordance  with  Holy  Scripture.  Thus  a 
higher  warrant  was  bestowed  upon  the  complaints  and 
demands  concerning  secular  and  material  matters.  The 
preaching  of  the  "new  gospel"  supervened  in  addition 
to  the  consideration  of  the  oppression  of  the  peasantry. 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  331 

To  all  the  petitions  for  a  more  equitable  adjustment 
of  the  lamentable  conditions  existing  among  the 
common  people,  most  of  the  rulers  turned  a  deaf  ear. 
Unfortunately,  instead  of  listening  patiently  and  sym- 
pathetically to  the  well-grounded  complaints  of  their 
subjects,  the  princes  not  only  refused  to  consider  the 
demands  made  on  them  and  afford  relief,  but  they 
added  insult  to  injury  by  treating  them  with  the  utmost 
harshness  and  severest  cruelty.  A  strong  desire  for 
retaliation  now  filled  the  minds  of  the  aggrieved  and 
despised  peasants.  Fancying  they  were  helping  the 
new  gospel,  they  thought  it  lawful  to  rise  against  those 
masters  who  had  been  represented  to  them  as  tyrants 
and  persecutors  of  the  Word  of  God.  Forthwith  the 
standard  of  revolt  was  everywhere  raised  and  on  it  was 
inscribed  the  talismanic  word — Liberty. 

At  the  breaking  out  of  the  rebellion,  when  the  greater 
part  of  Germany  was  thrown  into  arms,  fierce  fanati- 
cism and  wild  extravagance  dominated  the  minds  and 
spirits  of  the  insurgents.  In  the  disastrous  conflict  the 
heavy  oppression  and  the  many  disabilities  under  which 
the  masses  had  labored  for  years  were  for  the  most 
part  entirely  forgotten,  and,  in  their  place,  was  substi- 
tuted an  uncontrollable  passion  for  complete  liberty 
as  outlined  in  Luther's  "gospel  of  freedom"  under  the 
mistaken  approbation  found  in  biblical  passages  for 
equality  among  the  classes  and  a  juster  distribution 
of  property.  Luther  was  the  ''man  of  the  Evangel" 
and  on  him  the  eyes  of  the  great  number  of  the  peasants 
were  directed  when  the  rising  unfortunately  took  place. 
The  new  preaching,  proclaimed  by  word  of  mouth  and 
in  writings,  readily  fostered  among  the  excited  masses 
the  most  fantastic  and  impossible  notions  of  a  society 
in  which  they  were  to  be  in  complete  and  undisputed 
control.  The  passions  of  the  multitude  were  stirred 
up  to  the  highest  pitch.  They  purposed  to  overthrow 
the  whole  political  and  social  structure  as-  it  then 
existed.  They  wanted  to  efface  all  inequalities  in 
property,  employment  and  rank.  In  the  new  social 
order  they  aimed  to  establish  ''there  were  to  be  no 


232  The  Facts  About  Luther 

rulers  or  subjects,  no  rich  or  poor,  no  cities  or  com- 
merce, but  all  should  live  in  primitive  simplicity  and 
perfect  equality." 

The  fanatical  ministers,  who  harangued  the  peasants 
and  urged  them  on  to  execute  their  extravagant  and 
impractical  scheme,  made  bold  to  tell  their  dupes  ''that 
it  was  God's  will  they  should  everywhere  kill  and 
destroy  without  mercy  until  all  the  mighty  were  laid 
low  and  the  promised  Kingdom  of  God  established." 
Miinzer,  who  led  the  insurgent  troops,  and  all  his 
radical  associates,  according  to  McGiff  ert  and  hundreds 
of  other  non-Catholic  authors,  "appealed  to  Luther's 
gospel  and  quoted  his  writings  in  support  of  their 
program.  They  called  themselves  his  followers  and 
declared  it  their  purpose  to  put  his  principles  into 
practice.  And  whatever  was  true  of  the  leaders,  by 
the  great  mass  of  the  peasants  themselves  it  was 
doubtless  honestly  believed  that  Luther  was  with 
them  and  they  could  count  on  his  sympathy  and 
support."     (McGiffert  p.  252.) 

The  unrest,  brought  about  by  the  preaching  of  the 
apostasy,  came  quickly  to  a  head  and  the  catastrophe 
foreseen  filled  all  with  alarm.  The  rising  spread  terror 
on  all  sides  as  the  insurgents  attempted  to  revenge 
their  wrongs  by  bloodshed.  The  passions  of  the  crowd 
were  thoroughly  aroused  and  the  flames  of  insurrection 
were  kindled  all  over  the  country. 

At  this  time  Luther,  who  was  thoroughly  alarmed, 
wrote  a  pamphlet  with  the  purpose  of  keeping  the 
insurgents  within  limits.  In  this  work  entitled,  ''An 
Exhortation  to  Peace/'  he  rrges  the  peasants  to  keep 
quiet  and  renounce  all  desire  for  revenge,  and  appeals 
to  the  rulers  to  show  a  modicum  of  mercy  and  to  grant 
at  least  some  few  measures  of  relief.  His  endeavor 
at  this  time  to  stop  the  full  outbreak  o^  the  revolution 
was  no  doubt  sincere ;  but  his  interposition  in  favor  of 
order  came  too  late  and  lost  all  its  force  by  reason 
of  his  own  blundering  in  the  use  of  language  which 
tended  not  to  check,  but  to  develop  most  effectively  the 
growth  and  advancement  of  the  revolutionary  spirit. 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  333 

"Had  Luther,"  observes  Grisar,  ''been  endowed  with 
a  clear  perception  of  the  position  of  affairs,  and  seen 
the  utter  uselessness  of  any  attempt  merely  to  stem 
the  movement,  he  would  not  at  this  critical  juncture 
have  still  further  irritated  the  rebels  by  the  attacks 
upon  the  gentry,  into  which  he  allowed  himself  to 
break  out  and  which  were  at  once  taken  advantage  of." 

Luther's  "Exhortation  to  Peace"  consists  of  two 
parts,  one  addressed  to  the  princes,  the  other  to  the 
peasants.  In  the  first  part  of  this  work,  he  throws 
once  more  the  blame  on  the  princes  and  then  cries 
out:  ''Your  government  consists  in  nothing  else  but 
fleecing  and  oppressing  the  poor  common  people  in 
order  to  support  your  own  magnificence  and  arrogance 
till  they  neither  can  nor  will  endure  it.  The  sword  is 
at  your  throat ;  you  think  you  sit  fast  in  the  saddle 
and  that  it  will  be  impossible  to  overthrow  you.  But 
you  will  find  that  your  self-confidence  and  obstinacy 
will  be  the  breaking  of  your  necks."  "You  are  bringing 
it  upon  yourselves  and  wish  to  get  your  heads  broken. 
There  is  no  use  in  any  further  warning  or  admonish- 
ing." "God  has  so  ordained  it  that  your  furious  raging 
neither  can  nor  shall  any  longer  be  endured.  You  must 
become  different  and  give  way  to  the  word  of  God; 
if  you  refuse  to  do  it  willingly,  then  you  will  be  forced 
to  do  it  by  violence  and  riot.  If  the  peasants  do  not 
accomplish  it,  others  must." 

In  the  second  part  of  the  same  work  he  addresses  the 
peasant-  and  exhorts  them  not  only  to  suffer  in  a 
Christian  manner,  but  to  be  ready  to  endure  even  per- 
secution and  oppression  willingly.  This  special  pleading 
came  with  strange  grace  from  one  who  was  instru- 
mental in  raising  the  call  to  arms  and,  as  might  be 
expected,  its  eff'ect  was  destroyed  by  fresh  attacks 
against  the  ruling  classes.  He  says,  for  instance:  ii 
they,  the  Lords  and  Princes,  "forbid  the  preaching  of 
the  gospel  and  oppress  the  people  so  unbearingly,  then 
they  deserve  that  God  should  cast  them  down  from 
their  thrones,  as  they  sin  mightily  against  God  and 
man,  nor  have  they  any  excuse."     Luther  fancies  he 


234:  The  Facts  About  Luther 

already  sees  the  hands  stretched  out  to  execute  the 
sentence  and  concludes  his  address  by  saying  to  the 
princes :  "Tyrants  seldom  die  in  their  beds ;  as  a  rule 
they  perish  by  a  bloody  death.  Since  it  is  certain  that 
you  govern  tyrannically  and  savagely,  forbidding  the 
preaching  of  the  gospel,  and  fleecing  and  oppressing 
the  people,  there  is  no  comfort  or  hope  for  you,  but 
to  perish  as  those  Hke  you  have  perished." 

The  foregoing  is  the  merest  summary  of  Luther's 
pamphlet  On  Peace.  From  the  few  quotations  we 
have  furnished  it  is  clear  that  his  ill-timed  and  impru- 
dent language  was  little  calculated  to  inspire  confidence 
and  promote  the  interests  of  peace  between  the  two 
parties  who  were  at  daggers'  points.  Whilst  we  beHeve 
that  he  desired  when  the  outbreak  was  begun  that  all 
should  desist  from  violence  and  preserve  order,  yet 
we  cannot  forget  that  his  excitement  and  his  anxiety 
to  advance  the  interests  of  his  special  gospel  interpre- 
tation so  overcame  him  as  to  induce  him  to  use  lan- 
guage in  denunciation  of  the  injustice  of  the  princes 
which  could  not  fail  to  bring  into  fullest  play  the 
aroused  passions  of  the  oppressed  and  sorely  tried 
peasants.  The  ideas  of  gospel  freedom,  which  he  set 
forth  in  such  inflammatory  terms,  stuck  too  fast  in  their 
memory  and  imagination  to  be  displaced  by  any 
later  pronouncements,  especially  when  these  were 
coupled  with  fresh  attacks  against  their  oppressors. 
Henceforth  no  appeals  to  keep  order  and  observe  law 
were  of  use  to  extinguish  the  fire  already  enkindled 
in  their  souls.  All  they  thought  of  now  was  what 
pleased  them  in  Luther's  denunciations  of  their  wrongs, 
and,  hence,  all  advice  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
rebellion  or  revolution  was  spurned  and  contemned. 

Luther  is  now  thoroughly  vexed.  He  is  angered 
because  the  common  people,  whom  he  felt  he  owned 
body  and  soul,  were  no  longer  willing  in  his  changed 
mood  to  listen  to  his  advice  and  submit  to  his  further 
dictation.  To  his  mind  such  conduct  in  any  man  or 
any  body  of  men  was  an  unpardonable  crime.  But 
he  had  instilled  into  their  minds  his  new  "biblical" 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  235 

ideas  of  freedom,  and,  like  the  docile  disciples  they 
proved  themselves  to  be  for  a  time,  they  considered 
his  teachings  favorable  to  their  movement,  affording 
them  "ample  reason  to  break  forth  with  the  flail  and 
the  club."  To  abandon  these  ideas  now  that  they 
were  cognizant  of  his  shifting  position  was  a  course 
they  were  altogether  unwilling  to  pursue.  He  had 
taught  them  to  use  their  own  judgment  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  Bible  and  they  felt  they  were  entirely 
within  their  rights  when  they  differed  from  him  and 
set  up  a  view  of  their  own,  one  which  especially 
agreed  with  their  leanings  and  tendencies.  This  they 
would  not  relinquish  at  his  command.  They  refused 
to  heed  his  appeal  to  lay  down  their  arms.  Up  to  this 
time  Luther  had  made  common  cause  with  the  peas- 
ants, but  now  that  they  claimed  a  right  to  think  for 
themselves  and  to  frame  doctrines  of  their  own  mak- 
ing, gaining  an  evil  name  for  his  gospel  because  of 
the  frightful  atrocities  everywhere  perpetrated  in  its 
name,  he  forthwith  changed  his  attitude  towards  them 
and  immediately  presented  himself  in  a  new  aspect, 
that  of  a  cruel  and  relentless  oppressor. 

Imagining  that  the  warlike  disturbances  which  pre- 
vailed on  all  sides  were  the  work  of  the  devil,  Luther 
thought  it  high  time,  as  he  considered  himself  his 
chief  foe,  to  oppose  his  Satanic  Majesty  and  prevent 
him  from  inflicting  further  injury  on  himself  and  com- 
promising still  more  the  cause  of  his  evangel.  "If," 
he  says,  "the  devil  devoured  him  in  the  struggle  the 
result  would  be  a  belly  cramp."  Whilst  his  excitement 
increases  as  he  sees  his  influence  in  the  ranks  of  the 
peasants  decline  (and  his  fancies  at  the  time  concern- 
ing "signs  in  the  heavens  and  wonders  on  the  earth" 
"foreboding  no  good,"  grow),  sanguinary  encounters 
were  the  order  of  the  day.  The  insurrectionary  party 
spread  rapidly  over  Swabia,  the  Rhine  provinces,  Fran- 
conia,  Thuringia  and  even  approached  his  own  Saxony. 
Everything  was  upside  down.  Luther  became  thor- 
oughly alarmed.  What  he  saw  and  heard  of  the 
atrocities  in  the  insurgent  districts  filled  him  with  fear 


236  The  Facts  About  Luther 

and  dread.  He  "now  asked  himself,"  says  Grisar, 
"what  the  new  evangel  could  win  supposing  the  popu- 
lace gained  the  upper  hand,  and,  also  how  the  rulers 
who  had  hitherto  protected  his  cause  would  fare  in 
the  event  of  the  rebels  being  successful  in  the  Saxon 
Electorate  and  at  Wittenberg."  Passionate  rage,  not 
discriminating  justice,  decided  his  course  of  action. 
Assuming  the  role  of  a  cruel  and  relentless  oppressor, 
he  treacherously  turns  upon  the  poor  peasants  as  if 
they  were  not  his  own  spiritual  progeny  whom  he  led 
into  the  trap,  and  loudly  clamors  for  the  Princes  to 
turn  out  in  force  to  exterminate  all  who  had  taken  up 
the  sword  against  them.  In  the  fury  of  his  wrath 
at  the  horrors  of  the  armed  rebellion,  he  seemed  to 
forget  that  he  had  ever  been  the  relentless  enemy  of  the 
princes,  that  he  had  incessantly  rebuked  them  for  their 
tyranny  and  that  he  had  brazenly  denounced  them  as 
"the  greatest  fools  and  the  worst  rascals  on  earth." 
So  bitter  was  his  hostility  towards  the  very  people 
whom,  as  Osiander,  the  non-Catholic  historian,  says, 
he  "flattered  and  caressed  while  they  were  content  with 
attacking  the  bishops  and  the  clergy,"  that  he  now 
calls  upon  the  rulers,  regardless  of  his  former  antipathy 
toward  them,  to  act  in  the  most  vigorous  and  relentless 
manner  for  their  complete  suppression  and  extermina- 
tion. Thus,  from  the  rebels,  whose  cause  he  once 
espoused  and  encouraged,  he  turns  in  basest  perfidy 
and  meanest  sycophancy  to  ally  himself  entirely  with 
their  oppressors. 

At  this  juncture  he  wrote  a  terrible  tract  entitled, 
*' Against  the  Murderous  and  Rapacious  Hordes  of  the 
Peasants"  to  urge  the  civil  authorities  to  crush  the 
revolution.  This  tract  was  issued  about  May  4,  1525. 
In  a  copy  preserved  at  the  British  Museum,  London, 
we  find  these  heartless  words :  "Pure  deviltry  is  urging 
on  the  peasants ;  they  rob  and  rage  and  behave  like 
mad  dogs."  "Therefore  let  all  who  are  able,  mow  them 
down,  slaughter  and  stab  them,  openly  or  in  secret,  and 
remember  that  there  is  nothing  more  poisonous, 
noxious  and  utterly  devilish  than  a  rebel.    You  must 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  28  'i 

kill  him  as  you  would  a  mad  dog;  if  you  do  not  fall 
upon  him,  he  will  fall  upon  you  and  the  whole  land." 

In  this  tract  Luther  claims  that  the  peasants  are 
not  fighting  for  his  new  teaching,  nor  serving  the 
evangel.  "They,'^  he  says,  "serve  the  devil  under  the 
appearance  of  the  evangel  ...  I  believe  that  the  devil 
feels  the  approach  of  the  Last  Day  and  therefore  has 
recourse  to  such  unheard  of  trickery  .  .  .  Behold  what 
a  powerful  prince  the  devil  is,  how  he  holds  the  world 
in  his  hands,  and  can  knead  it  as  he  pleases."  '1  think 
there  is  not  a  single  devil  now  left  in  Hell,  but  they 
have  all  gone  into  the  peasants.  The  raging  is  exceed- 
ingly great  and  beyond  all  measure." 

He  therefore  calls  upon  the  princes  to  exert  their 
authority  with  all  their  might.  "Whatever  peasants," 
he  says,  "are  killed  in  the  fray,  are  lost  body  and  soul 
and  are  the  devil's  own  for  all  eternity.  The  authori- 
ties must  resolve  to  chastise  and  slay  so  long  as  they 
can  raise  a  finger:  Thou,  O  God,  must  judge  and  act. 
It  may  be  that  whoever  is  killed  on  the  side  of  the 
authorities  is  really  a  martyr  in  God's  cause.  A  happier 
death  no  man  could  die.  The  present  time  is  so  strange 
that  a  prince  can  gain  Heaven  by  spilling  blood  easier 
than  another  person  can  by  praying." 

Luther  does  not  forget  to  exhort  the  evangelically- 
minded  rulers  to  remember  to  offer  the  "mad  peasants," 
even  at  the  last,  "just  and  reasonable  terms,  but  where 
this  is  of  no  avail  to  have  recourse  at  once  to  the 
sword."  Before  this,  however,  he  says:  "I  will  not 
forbid  such  rulers  as  are  able  to  chastise  and  slay  the 
peasants  without  previously  offering  them  terms, 
although  it  is  not  according  to  the  Gospel." 

"He  is  not  opposed  to  indulgence  being  shown  those 
who  have  been  led  astray.  He  recommends  that  the 
many  "pious-folk"  who,  against  their  will,  were  com- 
pelled to  join  the  diabolical  league,  should  be  spared. 
At  the  same  time,  however,  he  declares,  that  they,  like 
the  others,  are  "going  to  the  devil  .  .  .  For  a  pious 
Christian  ought  to  be  willing  to  endure  a  hundred 
deaths  rather  than  yield  one  hair's  breadth  to  the  cause 


238  The  Facts  About  Luther 

of  the  peasants."  "It  has  been  said,"  Grisar  further 
remarks,  "it  was  for  the  purpose  of  hberating  those 
who  had  been  compelled  to  join  the  insurgents,  that  he 
admonished  the  princes  in  such  strong  terms,  even 
promising  them  heaven  as  the  reward  for  their 
shedding  of  blood,  and  that  the  overthrow  of  the 
revolt  by  every  possible  means  was,  though  in  this 
sense  only,  'for  Luther  a  real  work  of  charity.'  "  This, 
however,  is  incorrect,  for  he  does  not  speak  of  saving 
and  sparing  those  who  had  been  led  astray  until  after 
the  passage  where  he  says  that  the  princes  might  gain 
heaven  by  the  shedding  of  blood ;  nor  is  there  any  inner 
connection  between  the  passages;  he  simply  says: 
'There  is  still  one  matter  to  which  the  authorities  might 
well  give  attention.  Even  had  they  no  other  cause  for 
whetting  their  sword  against  the  peasants  this  (the 
saving  of  those  who  had  been  led  astray)  would  be 
more  than  sufficient  reason.'  After  the  appeal  for 
mercy  towards  those  Vv^ho  had  been  forced  to  fight, 
there  follows  the  cry :  'Let  whoever  is  able  help  in  the 
slaughter;  should  you  die  in  the  struggle,  you  could 
not  have  a  more  blessed  death.'  He  concludes  with 
Romans  xiii,  4,  concerning  the  authorities ;  "who  bear 
not  the  sword  in  vain,  avengers  to  execute  wrath  upon 
him  that  doth  evil." 

"While  his  indignant  pen  stormed  over  this  murder- 
ous paper,  Luther  had  been  thinking  with  terror  of  the 
consequences  of  the  bloody  contest,  and  of  the  likeli- 
hood of  the  peasants  coming  off  victorious.  He  writes  : 
"We  know  not  v/hether  God  may  not  intend  to  prelude 
the  Last  Day,  which  CLinnot  be  far  distant,  by  allowing 
the  devil  to  destroy  all  order  and  government,  and  to 
reduce  the  world  to  a  scene  of  desolation,  so  that  Satan 
may  obtain  the  'Kingdom  of  this  world.' " 

Such  is  the  brief  summaiy  Grisar  makes  of  this 
tract  ''Against  the  Murderous  and  Rapacious  Hordes 
of  Peasants/*  which  was  written  to  hound  on  the 
authorities  to  slay  in  cold  blood  their  misguided  sub- 
jects and  "choke  them  like  mad  dogs." 

All  along,  from  the  time  this  tract  was  first  issued 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  239 

till  the  present,  every  non-Catholic  writer  of  note  has 
been  loud  in  denouncing  and  condemning  its  passionate 
tone  and  cruel  teaching.  Among  the  latest  in  our  own 
day  we  present  the  following  estimates.  Lindsay,  an 
ardent  supporter  of  the  Reformer,  in  1908  says:  ''In 
this  terrible  pamphlet  Luther  hounded  on  the  princes 
to  crush  the  rising.  When  all  is  said  that  can.jeason- 
ably  be  said  in  explanation  of  his  action,  we  cannot 
I  help  feeling  that  the  language  of  this  pamphlet  is  an 
/  ineffaceable  stain   on   Luther,   which   no   extenuating 

L circumstances  can  wipe  out.  It  remains  the  greatest 
blot  on  his  life  and  jcareer.  j  (Lindsay's  Luther,  p. 
186.)  McGiffert,  writing  in  1912,  says:  "The  tract 
seemed  over-harsh  and  cruel  even  to  many  of  his 
friends."  (McGiffert,  p.  256.)  Vedder,  writing  in 
1914,  says:  "The  passionate  violence  and  bitterness 
of  this  pamphlet  constitutes  to  this  day  an  ineradicable 
blot  on  the  name  and  the  fame  of  Luther,  for  which 
his  admirers  attempt  various  lame  apologies,  but  no 
defense.  His  conduct  is  the  more  condemnable  when 
we  recollect  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  peasant,  that  his 
sympathies  should  naturally  have  been  with  the  class 
from  which  he  had  risen,  and  that  in  thus  taking 
w^ithout  reservation  the  side  of  the  princes,  and  becom- 
ing more  violent  in  words  than  they  were  in  deed,  he 
was  acting  the  renegade.  But  no  stones  should  be 
cast  at  him  to-day  by  those  men  who  have  come  up 
from  the  lower  ranks,  and  obtained  professional  stand- 
ing of  business  eminence  and  now  for  hire  take  the 
side  of  corporate  Avealth  and  special  interests,  against 
the  rights  and  welfare  of  the  plain  people  from  whom 
they  sprang.  Even  Luther's  friends  were  shocked  by 
this  pamphlet  and  remonstrated  with  him."  (Vedder, 
p.  244.) 

Luther's  advice  "to  strangle"  the  peasants,  "to  stab 
them  secretly  and  openly,  as  they  can,  as  one  would 
kill  a  mad  dog,"  was  fultilled  to  the  letter.  He  thought 
that  "God  gave  rulers  not  a  fox's  tail,  but  a  sword," 
and  "the  severity  and  rigor  of  the  sword,"  he  says,  "are 
as  necessary  for  the  people  as  eating  and  drinking,  yes. 


240  The  Facts  About  Luther 

as  life  itself."  The  time  in  his  estimation  had  come 
"to  control  the  populace  with  a  strong  hand"  and  the 
rulers  must  resort  to  ''the  severity  and  rigor  of  the 
sword."  "Like  the  mules,"  he  says,  "who  will  not  move 
unless  you  perpetually  whip  them  with  rods,  so  the  civil 
powers  must  drive  the  common  people,  whip,  choke, 
hang,  burn,  behead  and  torture  them,  that  they  may 
learn  to  fear  the  powers  that  be.  The  coarse,  illiterate 
Mr.  Great  I  am — the  people — must  be  forced,  driven 
as  one  forces  and  drives  swine  and  wild  animals."  (El. 
ed.  15,  276.)  This  is  a  most  astounding  utterance,  but 
apart  from  its  heartlessness  and  lack  of  consideration 
of  the  common  people  it  shows  the  way  Luther 
preached  liberty  and  democracy,  a  liberty  and  de- 
mocracy which  meant  absolutism  and  despotism  armed 
with  all  its  iron  terrors  in  government  and  through 
which  for  nearly  tv/o  centuries  after  the  nations  of 
Europe  were  oppressed  and  tyrannized. 

The  insurgent  bands  fought  under  the  name  of  the 
"Christian  Evangelical  Army."  They  struck  for  v/hat 
they  had  come  to  call  "Gospel  liberty,"  and  they  counted 
confidently  upon  supernatural  aid  in  their  blind  and 
reckless  undertaking.  They  had  the  spirit  and  the 
courage  of  the  boldest  of  warriors,  but  they  were 
unprepared  for  the  mighty  contest.  They  were  undis- 
ciplined and  lacked  adequate  military  training.  As 
might  be  expected  in  the  circumstances,  all  their 
attempts  to  overcome  the  thoroughly  equipped  forces 
of  the  confederated  princes  were  in  vain.  The  struggle 
went  on  with  vigor  and  intensity,  but  defeat  met  the 
insurgents  at  every  turn.  At  last  the  hostile  enemies 
met  in  May  1525  on  the  memorable  field  of  Franken- 
hausen.  Before  the  battle,  Miinzer,  the  leader  of  the 
peasants,  excited  his  troops  by  an  enthusiastic  appeal, 
and,  confident  of  success,  he  promised  his  followers 
that  "he  would  catch  all  the  bullets  aimed  at  them  in  his 
sleeves."  His  prediction  failed  in  its  realization.  The 
enemy's  fire  came  thick  and  fast  and  so  thinned  the 
ranks  of  the  peasant  forces  that  they  were  obliged  to 
flee  in  utter  confusion.     Miinzer,  who   fell  mortally 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  241 

wounded,  was  taken  and  publicly  executed.  In  his 
last  hours  he  recanted  his  errors  and  was  reconciled 
to  the  Church  of  his  fathers.  He  died  exhorting  the 
people  to  hold  fast  to  the  true  Catholic  faith.  To  his 
last  breath  he  accused  Luther,  whose  fanatical  teach- 
ings he  unfortunately  imbibed  and  advocated,  of  having 
been  the  cause  of  all  his  misfortunes.  With  the  death 
of  Miinzer  the  insurrection  ended.  The  confederated 
chiefs  scored  victory.  Their  triumph  hushed  the  voice 
of  the  poor  peasants  crying  out  for  redress  of 
grievances  in  their  blood.  The  civil  powers  obeyed 
Luther.  They  wielded  the  sword  unsparingly.  They 
drove  the  common  people  before  them  like  mules ;  they 
whipped,  choked,  hung,  burnt,  beheaded,  tortured  and 
slaughtered  "to  teach  them  to  learn  to  fear  the  powers 
that  be."  The  result  of  the  rebellion,  thus  stifled  in 
the  blood  of  the  common  people,  was  a  weakening  of 
the  democratic  principle  and  a  strengthening  of  the 
arm  of  power. 

In  the  short  time  the  rebellion  lasted  the  peasants 
were  slaughtered  like  sheep.  It  is  computed  that  more 
than  a  hundred  thousand  men  fell  in  the  tield  of  battle. 
Cities  were  leveled  to  the  ground,  churches,  monasteries 
and  asylums  were  burned.  Immense  treasures  of 
painting,  sculpture  and  other  works  of  art  were 
destroyed.  All  manner  of  excesses  were  committed 
and  general  disorder  prevailed.  The  rights  of  prop- 
erty, of  life  and  of  liberty  were  ruthlessly  trampled 
under  foot.  Wholesale  massacre  and  sacrilege,  un- 
heard of  in  the  Catholic  Middle  Ages,  were  the  order 
of  the  day  whilst  the  v^r  lasted.  Had  the  insurgents 
triumphed  Germany  would  have  relapsed  into  bar- 
barism; Hterature,  arts,  poetry,  morahty,  faith  and 
authority  would  have  been  buried  under  the  same  ruin. 
This  was  the  greatest  tragedy  of  the  age  and  surpassed 
in  magnitude  any  ever  seen  in  Germany  before.  The 
dire  results  it  occasioned  did  not,  however,  in  the  least 
disturb  Luther.  When  the  war  ended  and  the 
Reformer  saw  the  last  of  the  crowd  he  exhorted  the 
princes  to  slaughter  for  carrying  out  his  own  pet  prin- 


Z42  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ciples,  he  celebrated  their  funeral,  as  Osiander  tells  us, 
*'by  marrying  a  nun"  he  helped  to  escape  from  her 
convent.  This  reminds  us  of  Erasmus'  significant 
remark,  that  while  Luther  was  reveling  in  his  nuptials, 
"a.  hundred  thousand  peasants  were  descending  to  the 
tomb."  The  massacre  of  the  poor  victims  of  his 
*'Evangel  of  freedom"  was  evidently  a  matter  of  little 
concern  to  the  holy  (?)  man,  the  ex-priest,  Martin 
Luther  and  his  Katie  Von  Bora,  the  Adam  and  Eve  of 
the  "new  gospel"  of  concubinage. 

The  voice  of  all  history  proclaims  that  Luther  was 
the  cause  of  the  insurrection  of  the  peasants  and  of 
their  subsequent  massacre.  Protestant  writers  for  the 
last  four  centuries  have  declared  that  he  was  the  fire- 
brand who  alternately  stirred  up  peasant  against  prince 
and  prince  against  peasant.  Intelligent  non-Catholic 
minds  of  his  own  day  denounced  him  as  the  instiga- 
tor of  the  rising  and  accused  him  of  being  the  cause 
of  all  the  subsequent  bloodshed.  Besides  Osiander, 
whom  we  quoted  above,  we  have,  for  instance, 
Hospinian  and  Simon,  two  careful  observers  of  the 
times  who  looked  upon  him  as  the  disturber  of  the 
peace  and  the  promoter  of  revolution.  Hospinian 
says,  addressing  Luther:  "It  is  you  who  excited  the 
peasants  to  revolt."  Simon  asserts  the  same  thing: 
*'We  leave  to  Lutherans  to  ponder  over  the  outlandish 
and  sanguinary  factions  which  they  excited  some  years 
ago  m  order  to  introduce  and  recommend  their  doc- 
trines." Ulrich  Zasius,  the  jurist,  who  at  one  time 
had  been  inclined  to  favor  Luther,  wrote  in  the  year 
of  the  revolt  to  his  friend  Amerbach  as  follows: 
"Luther,  the  destroyer  of  peace,  the  most  pernicious  of 
men,  has  plunged  the  whole  of  Germany  into  such 
madness,  that  we  now  consider  ourselves  lucky  if  we 
are  not  slain  on  the  spot."  Cochlaeus,  estimating  the 
number  of  the  slaughtered  peasants  at  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand,  does  not  exaggerate  when  he  declares 
that  "on  the  day  of  Judgment,  Miinzer  and  his  peasants 
will  cry  out  before  God  and  His  angels,  'Vengeance  on 
Luther.'  "  Erasmus,  who  was  closely  observing  Luther, 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  243 

reproached  him  with  having  fomented  the  rebellion 
"by  his  libels  against  the  monks  and  shaven  crowns." 
When  Luther  wrote  that  "he  believed  there  was  not  a 
single  devil  now  left  in  hell,  but  that  they  had  all  gone 
into  the  peasants,"  and  that  a  prince  ''now  might 
better  earn  heaven  by  bloodshed  than  by  prayer," 
Erasmus  promptly  ansv/ered  him  in  these  memorable 
words :  "We  are  now  reaping  the  fruit  of  your  spirit. 
You  do  not  acknowledge  the  rebels,  but  they  acknowl- 
edge you,  and  it  is  well  known  that  many  who  boast 
of  the  name  of  the  evangel  have  been  instigators  of 
the  horrible  revolt.  It  is  true  you  have  attempted  in 
your  grim  booklet  against  the  peasants  to  allay  this 
suspicion,  but  nevertheless  you  cannot  dispel  the 
general  conviction  that  this  mischief  was  caused  by 
the  books  you  sent  forth  against  the  monks  and 
bishops,  in  favor  of  evangelical  freedom,  and  against 
the  tyrants,  more  especially  by  those  written  in 
German."     (Hyperaspistes,  Opp.  p.  1032.) 

As  time  went  on  numerous  authors  other  than 
Luther's  contemporaries  wrote  on  the  important  topic, 
and  they,  cognizant  of  all  the  testimony  in  the  case, 
proclaimed  in  the  interests  of  truth  the  Reformer's 
undoubted  agency  in  bringing  about  the  ''Peasants' 
War."  Plank,  an  eminent  Protestant  writer  and 
defender  of  Luther,  says :  "It  is  but  too  evident  that 
this  revolution  was  prepared  by  the  reform  agitations, 
and  that  by  such  agitations  the  minds  of  the  people 
were  deluded  by  such  a  swindle  which  otherwise  would 
not  have  inflamed  so  many  minds  at  once."  (Plank, 
Entstch.  Des  Prob.  Lehb.)  Karl  Hagen,  an  eminent 
Protestant  historian,  writes :  "Even  Luther  ...  in  his 
earlier  writings,  contributed  to  foster  the  rebellious 
feeling  among  the  people;  for  once  he  actually  incited 
the  German  nation  to  bathe  itself  in  the  blood  of  the 
Papists,  and  he  declared  that  they  would  do  a 
thing  agreeable  to  God,  who  would  make  away 
with  the  Bishops,  destroy  Churches  and  Convents! 
He  'called...  the  princes...  impious,  miserable 
rascals...    silly    fools,'    whose    tyranny    and    caprice 


244  The  Facts  About  Lut  h  er 

people  neither  could,  nor  would  put  up  with  for  any 
length  of  time.  ,Was  it  surprising  that  this  judgment 
of  the  Reformer  concerning  the  reigning  powers 
remained  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  his  readers,  and 
thaj:  on  the  other  hand  they  doubted  the  correctness  of 
his  doctrine  of  unconditional  obedience?"  (K.  Hagen, 
Deutsche  Geschichte,  etc.  pp.  183-184.)  Lindsay,  in 
his  ''Luther  and  the  German  Reformation,"  page  169, 
says:  ''When  we  consider  the  causes  w^hich  produced 
the  Peasants'  War,  it  must  be  acknowledged  that  there 
w^as  an  intimate  connection  between  that  disastrous 
outburst  and  Luther's  message  to  the  German  people." 
McGiffert,  whilst  he  does  not  wish  to  hold  his  hero 
responsible  for  the  tremendous  uprising  of  1525,  never- 
theless makes  the  following  significant  admission  on 
page  250:  "His  (Luther's)  attacks  upon  many  features 
of  the  existing  order,  his  criticisms  of  the  growing 
luxury  of  the  wealthier  classes,  his  denunciation  of 
the  rapacity  and  greed  of  great  commercial  magnates 
and  of  the  tyranny  and  corruption  of  rulers  both  civil 
and  ecclesiastical,  all  tended  to  inflame  the  populace 
and  spread  impatience  and  discontent.  His  Gospel  of 
Christian  liberty  also  had  its  effect."  Vedder,  on  page 
242  of  his  work  on  Luther,  says:  The  peasants 
"became  conscious  that  they  had  rights,  that  they  might 
rise,  and  that  their  inherited  condition  was  a  hindrance 
to  them.  At  this  time  Luther  came  preaching  that  the 
Pope  was  a  tyrant,  imposing  unjust,  useless,  even 
injurious  laws  upon  the  people ;  that  the  bishops  were 
doing  the  same  thing ;  and  that  the  rulers,  in  addition 
to  tiie  wrongs  that  they  themselves  inflicted,  were  pro- 
tecting and  upholding  the  Pope  and  the  bishops.  Those 
among  the  poorer  classes  who  believed  Luther  came  to 
feel  that  the  rulers  were  their  enemies  and  God's 
enemies.  That  they  had  this  feeling  is  proved  by  their 
conduct,  by  their  publications  and  the  testimony  of  all. 
That  Luther's  teaching  helped  to  produce  and  intensify 
it  is  equally  clear." 

But,  why  multiply  evidence  to  prove  our  contention  ? 
J'he  most  conclusive  argument  is  furnished  by  Luther 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  246 

himself  who  accepted  the  responsibility  for  the  wide 
slaughter  of  the  peasants.  On  one  occasion  in  later 
years,  looking  back  upon  the  events  of  the  unhappy 
rising,  he  declared  that  he  was  completely  at  ease  con- 
cerning the  advice  he  had  given  to  the  authorities 
against  the  peasants,  in  spite  of  the  sanguinary  results. 
*Treachers,"  he  says,  in  his  usual  drastic  mode  of 
expression,  "are  the  biggest  murderers  about,  for  they 
admonish  the  authorities  to  fulfil  their  duty  and  to 
punish  the  wicked.  I,  Martin  Luther,  slew  all  the 
peasants  in  the  rebellion,  for  I  said  they  should  be  slain ; 
all  their  blood  is  upon  my  head.  But,"  he  blas- 
phemously added,  "I  put  it  upon  the  Lord  God  by 
whose  command  I  spoke."  Thus  his  usual  persuasion, 
viz.,  that  he  was  God's  instrument,  here  again  is  made 
use  of. 

Luther's  cruel  pamphlet  against  the  "murderous 
peasants"  caused  such  an  amount  of  criticism  and 
complaint  among  his  friends  and  followers  that  he 
thought  himself  called  upon  to  answer  "the  wise-acres 
who  wished  to  teach  him  how  he  should  write"  and 
to  vindicate  all  he  advocated  in  his  previous  publica- 
tions. This  he  did  in  an  "open  letter,"  which  he  is- 
sued whei.  the  revolt  was  practically  suppressed  and 
peace  was  partially  assured.  A  careful  perusal  of 
this  work,  which  was  written  not  under  pressure  of 
excitement,  but  in  cold  blood  and  after  due  deliberation, 
shows  that  he  recants  nothing  of  what  he  taught  before, 
but  brazenly  repeats  the  offense  and  in  spite  of  the 
scandal  caused  even  takes  pleasure  in  using  stronger 
language  than  any  he  had  already  availed  himself  of. 
In  his  endeavor  to  justify  himself  he  boldly  maintains 
that  it  was  nuite  right  for  him  to  say,  "that  everybody 
ought  to  strike  into  the  peasants,  strangle  them,  stab 
them  by  stealth  or  openly  as  they  can,  as  one  would  kill 
a  mad  dog."  This  is  his  deliberate  opinion  concerning 
his  former  work  as  he  clearly  declares  in  the  fol- 
lowing passage:  "Therefore  my  little  book  against 
the  peasants  is  quite  in  the  right  and  shall  remain  so, 
even  if  all  the  world  were  to  be  scandalized  at  it." 


246  The  Facts  About  Luther 

(Erlanger  Ausgabe,  XXIV,  299.)  "Here,  as  in  many 
other  places,  where  Luther  has  to  defend  his  standpoint 
against  attack,"  KostHn,  a  non-Catholic,  says  of  this 
writing,  "he  draws  the  reins  tighter  instead  of  easing 
them.  Here  he  no  longer  sees  fit  to  say  even  one 
word  in  behalf  of  the  peasants,  notwithstanding  the 
real  grievances  which  had  caused  the  rising." 

It  was  characteristic  of  Luther  never  to  admit  that 
he  was  in  the  wrong.  He  says  of  himself:  *To  the 
best  of  my  judgment,  there  is  neither  Emperor,  king 
nor  devil  to  whom  I  would  yield :  no,  I  would  not  yield 
even  to  the  whole  world." 

His  dislike  for  the  peasants  on  account  of  their 
disagreement  with  his  general  views  was  deep  rooted 
and  on  every  available  occasion  he  manifested  this 
feeling  in  vilest  denunciation.  In  speech  and  writ- 
ing, he  poured  forth  bitterest  words  of  anger  against 
them.  *'A  peasant  is  a  hog,"  he  says  in  1532,  "for 
when  a  hog  is  slaughtered  it  is  dead,  and  in  the  same 
way  the  peasant  does  not  think  about  the  next  life, 
for  otherwise  he  would  behave  very  differently." 
(Schlaginhaufen,  "Aufzeichnungen"  p.  118,)  At  the 
same  period  he  says :  "The  peasant  remains  a  boor, 
do  what  you  will" ;  "they  have,"  so  he  remarks, 
"their  mouth,  nose,  eyes  and  everything  else  in  the 
wrong  place."  "I  believe  that  the  devil  does  not  mind 
the  peasants" ;  he  "despises  them  as  he  does  leaden 
pennies" ;  he  thinks  "he  can  easily  manage  to  secure 
them  for  himself,  as  they  will  assuredly  be  claimed 
by  no  one."  (Cordatus,  "Tagebuch,"  p.  127.)  "A 
peasant  who  is  a  Christian  is  like  a  wooden  poker.*' 
(Cordatus,  Ibid.  p.  131.)  To  one  who  was  about  to 
marry  he  wrote:  "My  Katie  sends  you  this  friendly 
warning,  to  beware  of  marrying  a  country  lass,  for 
they  are  rude  and  proud,  cannot  get  on  well  with  their 
husbands  and  know  neither  how  to  cook  nor  to  brew." 
( Brief e,  ed  De  Wette.) 

"The  peasants  as  well  as  the  nobles  throughout  the 
country,"  he  complains  in  1533,  in  a  letter  to  Spalatin, 
"have  entered  into  a  conspiracy  against  the  evangel. 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  247 

though  they  make  use  of  the  liberty  of  the  gospel  in 
the  most  outrageous  manner.  It  is  not  surprising  that 
the  Papists  oppose  us.  God  will  be  our  Judge  in  this 
matter!  Oh,  the  awful  ingratitude  of  our  age,  we 
can  only  hope  and  pray  for  the  speedy  coming  of  our 
Lord  and  Saviour  (the  Last  Day)."  ( Brief wechsel,  9, 

P-  333-) 

The  violent  invective  which  Luther  hurled  against 
the  "murderous  peasants*'  in  the  year  1525  had  a  last- 
ing and  disastrous  effect,  not  only  on  the  Reformation, 
but  on  the  Reformer  himself.  All  fair-minded  Protes- 
tant historians,  writing  of  this  period,  acknowledge 
that  his  former  popularity  and  his  influence  over  the 
crowd  were  gone.  Up  to  this  he  seemed  to  have  the 
greater  number  of  the  discontented  behind  him,  but 
now  that  his  power  over  them  was  weakened,  owing 
to  his  fickle  and  vacillating  nature,  he  was  obliged  (in 
the  presence  of  his  changing  tactics)  more  and  more 
to  seek  the  assistance  necessary  to  maintain  his 
preachments  in  the  camp  of  the  princes.  His  shift- 
ing from  the  peasants  to  the  authorities  caused  no 
small  amount  of  adverse  criticism  and  in  consequence 
he  was  denounced  and  even  branded  as  a  "hypocrite" 
and  "slave  of  princes"  by  many  of  the  discontented. 
All  were  agciinst  him  and  some  even,  as  he  says  himself, 
^'threatened  him  with  death."  ''The  springtime  of  the 
Reformation  was  over,"  says  Hausrath.  "Luther  no 
longer  passed  from  one  triumph  to  another  as  he  had 
during  the  first  seven  years  of  his  career.  He  himself 
says :  'Had  not  the  revolted  peasants  fouled  the  water 
for  my  fishing,  things  would  look  very  different  for 
the  Papacy.'  The  hope  to  overthrow  completely  the 
Roman  rule  in  Germany  by  means  of  a  united,  over- 
whelmingly powerful,  popular  movement  had  become 
a  mere  dream."  (Hausrath,  "Luther's  Leben,"  2,  p. 
62.) 

Luther  was  fully  aware  of  the  disastrous  conse- 
quences of  his  evil  teachings.  He  recognized  that  the 
common  people,  as  a  result  of  his  doctrines,  lost  many 
rights    and    privileges,    which    they    had    previously 


248  The  Facts  About  Luther 

enjoyed,  and  that  they  were  no  longer  disposed  to  look 
upon  him  as  a  leader  worthy  of  confidence  and  support. 
The  crowds  that  heretofore  followed  him  in  rebellion 
were  gradually  decreasing  in  numbers  and  there  were 
grave  fears  that  the  safety  and  progress  of  his  pet 
schemes  were  in  danger  of  complete  collapse.  To 
preserve  and  keep  his  evangel  in  prominence  was  the 
problem  that  confronted  him.  It  called  for  a  speedy 
and  practical  solution.  As  he  was  a  consummate  poH- 
tician,  ever  ready  to  sacrifice  any  principle  for  political 
expediency,  he  had  no  difficulty  in  rising  to  the 
emergency.  Having  abandoned  the  people  who  he 
had  at  one  time  believed,  had  the  right  of  armed 
resistance  to  authority,  he  sees  now  the  need  he  has 
in  his  shaky  position  of  the  strong  arm  of  the  secular 
power.  Putting  aside  all  his  innermost  convictions 
regarding  an  independent  Church  free  from  secular 
control,  he  now  in  cowardice  and  weakness  determines 
to  place  his  whole  reliance  for  the  propagation  of  his 
evangel  on  the  princes  he  once  denounced  and  con- 
demned. This  vacillating  character,  who  once  re- 
pudiated all  authority  in  religion,  and  rejected  that 
of  Pope  and  Emperor,  now  falls  back  on  it  as  em- 
bodied in  the  princes  of  the  period.  Under  the  pres- 
sure of  circumstances  and  in  spite  of  his  better 
judgment,  he  accepted  Erastianism  as  a  practical 
solution  of  a  difficult  problem  and  forthwith  inaugu- 
rated the  typical  State-Church,  a  Church  which  soon 
after  became  the  tool  and  instrument  of  civil  power 
and  which  eventually  was  absorbed  by  it.  *The  State," 
Grisar  says,  ''had  stood  sponsor  to  the  new  faith  on 
its  first  appearance,  and,  whether  in  Luther's  interest 
or  in  its  own,  the  State  continued  to  intervene  in 
matters  pertaining  to  the  Church.  This  interweaving 
of  poHtics  with  religion  failed  to  insure  to  the  new 
Church  the  friendly  assistance  of  the  State  but  soon 
brought  it  into  a  position  of  entire  subservience  in 
spite  of  the  protests  of  the  originators  of  the  innova- 
tions." (Grisar  III,  p.  29.)  "The  Catholic  Church" 
observes    Fr.    Johnston,    "had    preferred    to    lose    a 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  249 

nation — England — rather  than  abandon  her  principles  : 
Luther  won  over  the  larger  part  of  his  nation — Germany 
— by  abandoning  his  own  principles." 

As  Melanchthon  had  foreseen,  the  most  insupportable 
tyranny  took  the  place  of  the  promised  freedom  of  faith 
and  conscience  in  consequence  of  state  absorption  of 
Church  interests.  According  to  the  execrable  maxim 
of  the  Lutheran  creed,  *'Cujus  regio,  ejus  religio," 
which  was  formally  enunciated  by  the  rulers  and  theo- 
logians of  that  church  assembled  at  Passau  soon  after 
Luther's  death  and  which  gained  wide  acceptance, 
the  religion  of  each  province  depended  on  the  caprice 
of  its  reigning  prince.  '*He  that  owns  the  country 
owns  the  Church,  and  he  that  makes  your  laws  for  you 
has  a  right  to  make  your  religion  for  you."  There 
never  was  a  theory  more  odious,  both  in  the  light  of 
civil  and  of  religious  liberty.  If  the  prince  chose  to 
go  over  to  the  Reformers,  his  subjects  had  to  go  with 
him.  In  one  instance,  that  of  Pfalz,  the  religion  of 
the  people  was  changed  arbitrarily  four  times  within 
eighty  years  by  reason  of  this  principle.  Catholic 
worship  was  forbidden,  Catholic  priests  were  banished, 
and  if  any  resisted  the  new  order  of  things,  he  was 
robbed  of  his  goods,  expelled  from  the  land,  or  subdued 
by  imprisonment,  hunger,  tortures  and  threats  of  death. 
In  some  cases  the  territories  of  Catholic  rulers  were 
forcibly  seized  and  Protestantized  by  Protestant 
princes.  Dukedoms  and  kingdoms  became  "Lutheran," 
or  "Sacramentarian,"  or  "Calvinistic,"  or  adopted  some 
other  phase  of  Protestantism,  according  to  the  dictates 
of  the  prince  or  duke  or  king  who  ruled  them.  This 
is  simply  a  historical  fact  and  cannot  be  disproved. 

It  is  also  undeniable  that,  with  few  exceptions,  the 
almost  countless  Protestant  "confessions"  and  "decla- 
rations of  belief"  of  the  sixteenth  century  were 
submitted  to  the>approval  of  secular  rulers  and  enforced 
by  them.  This  is  the  fact  as  regards  the  Augsburg 
Confession,  which  is  the  fundamental  declaration  of 
belief  of  the  Lutherans ;  the  Heidelberg  Catechism, 
the  most  generally  accepted  form.ula  of  belief  of  the 


250  The  Facts  About  Luther 

"Sacramentarians"  "or  followers  of  Zwingle  and 
Calvin"  or,  as  they  style  themselves,  the  "Reformed" 
churches  of  France,  Switzerland,  Germany  and  Hol- 
land, and  it  is  notoriously  true  with  regard  to  the 
"Thirty-nine  Articles"  of  the  ''Established  Church  of 
England." 

Where  the  Reformers  dared  attempt  it,  as  in 
Switzerland,  they  fused  the  secular  and  spiritual 
authority  together  and  established  a  theocracy.  Where 
they  dared  not  attempt  this,  they  placed  themselves 
sycophantly  at  the  feet  of  secular  rulers  as  in  England 
and  Prussia. 

According  to  the  Reformers,  the  individual  was  the 
sole  and  all-sufficient  judge  in  religious  matters, 
amenable  to  no  authority  and  quite  competent  to  pass 
upon  the  law  of  God,  to  interpret  and  expound  it,  to 
admit  or  reject  portions  of  it,  according  as  his  "reason" 
should  dictate.  The  leaders,  it  is  true,  confined  this 
principle  to  revelation.  But  more  logical  minds  soon 
extended  it  to  other  matters,  and  thus  ambitious  secular 
rulers  whose  hearts  were  set  on  self-aggrandizement 
and  the  extension  of  their  royal  prerogatives,  following 
the  example  of  the  ''Reformers,"  set  up  their  own 
private  judgment  as  the  supreme  tribunal  for  the 
determination  of  all  matters,  ecclesiastical  or  political, 
within  their  respective  domains.  The  "Reformers" 
practically  confined  the  so-called  right  of  private  judg- 
ment each  one  to  himself  and  his  followers,  but,  soon, 
too,  they  virtually  surrendered  it  to  the  secular  princes 
who  protected  them,  with  the  result  that  there  was 
instituted  a  policy  which,  as  systematized  and  further 
carried  out  later  on,  culminated  in  the  almost  entire 
demolition  of  the  institutions  of  constitutional  govern- 
ment and  of  the  safeguards  of  civil  liberty  in  all 
Protestant  countries  and  in  most  of  the  Catholic  centres 
of  Europe  during  the  sixteenth  century,  the  seventeenth 
and  far  on  into  the  eighteenth.  One  of  the  most  famous 
historians  of  modern  times,  Guizot,  once  prime  minister 
of  France,  referring  to  this,  says,  in  his  Lectures  on 
Civilization  in  Modern  Europe:  ''The  Emancipation 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  251 

(!)  of  the  human  mind  (by  the  'Reformation')  and 
absolute  monarchy  triumphed  simultaneously  in 
Europe."  Reserving  the  word  "emancipation,"  Guizot's 
startling  statement  of  the  fact  is  true. 

During  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  that  followed 
the  so-called  Reformation,  Europe  went  back  as 
regards  civil  liberty  almost  to  the  absolutism  of  Caesar 
Augustus  and  his  successors.  All  who  have  but  glanced 
at  the  political  history  of  Europe  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, and  later  on,  must  know  that  the  ancient  liberties 
of  the  people  were  crushed  and  temporal  rulers  were 
virtual  despots.  Passing  over  England  with  its 
tyrannical  sovereigns,  its  alternately  sycophantic  and 
rebellious  Parliaments,  its  revolutions  and  restora- 
tions, it  is  only  necessary  to  cite  Protestant  Prussia, 
Denmark  and  Sweden.  Nor  does  the  fact  that  the 
statement  applies  also  to  France  and  Spain  weaken  in 
the  least  the  force  of  our  argument.  Their  peoples 
were  Catholic ;  in  Spain  exclusively  so,  in  France  by  a 
vast  majority.  Their  rulers  were  professedly  Catholics, 
but  quickly  learning  the  lessons  of  the  Reformers  they 
were  anything  but  Catholic  in  their  political  policy, 
and  in  their  actions  as  regards  both  Church  and  State 
they  were  behind  no  other  temporal  sovereigns  of  the 
period  in  extending  their  royal  prerogatives  and 
breaking  down  all  the  ancient  guarantees  of  constitu- 
tional liberty  in  their  respective  dominions,  despite 
the  remonstrances  and  protests  of  successive  Sovereign 
Pontiiis  of  the  Church.  In  belief  they  were  Catholics; 
in  the  exercise  of  political  power  they  acted  according 
to  their  own  imperial  "private  judgment"  defying  alike 
the  authority  of  constitutional  civil  law  and  that  of  the 
wise  and  sane  teachings  and  rulings  of  the  Church  of 
God.  As  notable  examples  you  will  recall  Francis  I. 
of  France,  Charles  V.  of  Spain,  Prussia  and  the 
Netherlands — Catholics  in  belief,  but  Protestants  ia 
their  political  policy.  Then  came  Louis  XIV.  of 
France  whose  famous  dictum,  *'I  am  the  State,"  was 
carried  out  by  him  to  a  despotic  extent  with  regard 
also  to  ecclesiastical  affairs.     Albert  of  Brandenberg, 


Z5Z  The  Facts  About  Luther 

who  was  called  by  his  contemporaries  "the  Attila  of 
the  Reformation,"  pursued  the  same  tyrannical  course. 
He  laid  the  foundation  for  the  present  kingdom  of 
Prussia  by  sacrilegious  plunderings  and  invasions,  and 
established  a  despotism  which  has  descended  as  a 
part  of  his  patrimony  to  his  successors  on  the  throne 
of  that  country.  In  no  region  in  Europe  has  despotism 
been  so  thoroughly  systematized  as  to  Church  and 
State  as  in  Prussia. 

"Thus,   from  the  very  outset  of  the  Reformation 

onwards,  that  movement,"  says  a  writer  in  the  Am. 
CatJi.  Quarterly  Reznew,  "has  not  promoted  civil  liber- 
ty, but  has  retarded  its  progress.  It  taught  no  true  prin- 
ciple respecting  human  rights  and  civil  institutions  that 
was  not  previously  known  and  taught  by  the  Catholic 
Church,  her  doctors  and  theologians,  long  years  ago. 
It  introduced  principles  of  disorder  and  confusion, 
which  inevitably  led  to  anarchy  on  the  one  hand  and 
tyranny  on  the  other." 

No  other  result  could  be  expected.  In  its  funda- 
mental principle  the  Reformation  denied  authority, 
encouraged  individualism,  and  promoted  resistance  to 
established  government.  When  this  centrifugal  prin- 
ciple brought  in  insubordination,  uprisings  and  popular 
revolts,  the  Reformers  went  to  the  other  extreme  and 
justified  absolutism  and  the  use  of  despotic  means  in 
the  government  of  the  people.  So  Protestantism,  while 
tending  inevitably  to  destroy  popular  rights,  at  the 
same  time  strengthened  the  arbitrary  rule  of  the  civil 
powers. 

"Wherever,"  Abp.  Spalding  observes,  "the  Refor- 
mation had  penetrated  and  had  uplifted  its  'fiery  cross,' 
protracted  civil  wars  had  everywhere  marked  its  prog- 
ress and  blood  shed  by  brother  armed  against  brother 
in  fratricidal  strife  had  everywhere  stained  the  soil  of 
Europe.  Its  career  might  have  been  traced  by  the 
dismantled  or  burning  churches,  the  ruined  monasteries 
and  the  smoking  libraries,  which  it  usually  left  behind 
it — the  dismal  trophies  of  its  victory  over  the  old 
religion.     It  had  unsettled  society,  and  it  threatened 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  253 

the  change  or  destruction  of  existing  dynasties.  No 
government  any  longer  rested  on  a  secure  foundation ; 
what  was  strong  to-day  might  be  tottering  to  its  fall 
to-morrow.  And  the. new  political  order,  which  was 
to  rise  on  the  ruins  of  the  old,  however  flattering  soever 
to  popular  liberty  were  its  promises,  did  not  really 
result,  at  least  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  in  any 
greater  extension  of  popular  freedom." 

"The  political  tendency  was,  rather  on  the  contrary, 
in  the  opposite  direction.  To  strengthen  their  party, 
the  reformers  almost  everywhere  threw  themselves, 
body  and  soul,  into  the  arms,  or  rather  under  the  feet 
of  the  new  kings  and  princes  who  had"  acquired  riches 
by  the  spoliation  of  the  old  Church,  and  had  obtained 
increased  political  consequence  and  power  by  the  pro- 
tection of  the  new  gospelers.  This  protection  generally 
consisted  in  that  utier  enslavement  of  religion,  which 
so  often  results  from  the  union  of  Church  and  State, 
and  which  is  almost  always  a  necessary  result  whenever 
the  spiritual  as  well  as  the  temporal  power  is  lodged 
in  the  same  hands.  This  was  invariably  the  case 
wherever  the  Reformation  triumphed  in  Europe." 

"The  idle  boast,"  observes  Dr.  Corcoran,  "that  politi- 
cal liberty  has  any  connection  with  Martin  Luther  or 
his  Reformation  is  sufficiently  disproved  by  the  fact 
that  the  liberties  of  Germany  were  effectually  lost 
after  Lutheranism  had  brought  Germany  under  its 
influence,  and  nowhere  more  thoroughly  than  in  Scan- 
dinavian Europe,  where  it  became  supreme  without  a 
rival."  This  was  noticed  more  than  two  hundred  years 
ago — 1692 — by  an  acute  observer,  Lord  Molesworth, 
British  Ambassador  to  the  Court  of  Copenhagen,  who 
not  only  observed  the  fact,  but  discovered  its  reason. 
"In  the  Roman  Catholic  religion,"  he  says,  "there  is  a 
resisting  principle  to  absolute  civil  power  from  the 
division  of  authority  with  the  head  of  the  Church  of 
Rome.  But  in  the  North,  the  Lutheran  church  is 
entirely  subservient  to  the  civil  power  and  the  whole 
of  the  northern  people  of  Protestant  countries  have 
lost  their  liberties  ever  since  they  have  changed  their 


254  The  Facts  About  Luther 

religion  for  a  better."  (Quoted  by  Laing,  Notes  of  a 
Traveler.)  Mr.  Hallam  says:  'It  is  one  of  the 
fallacious  views  of  the  Reformation,  to  which  we  have 
adverted  in  a  former  page,  to  fancy  that  it  sprang 
from  any  notions  of  political  freedom,  in  such  a  sense 
as  we  attach  to  the  term." 

Luther,  then,  deserves  no  praise  at  the  lips  of  any 
well-informed  people  for  any  influence  his  teachings 
may  have  exercised  on  civi4  or  religious  liberty.  All 
the  rhetoric  expended  in  lauding  him  as  a  great  libera- 
tor is  worse  than  wasted.  Every  attempt  to  hold  him 
up  as  the  advocate  of  "freedom  of  conscience"  and 
the  promoter  of  "religious  liberty"  is  intended  either 
to  lead  the  ignorant  into  error  or  confirm  the  delusions 
of  existing  prejudice.  The  enemies  of  God  and  His 
Church  may  glorify  to  their  hearts'  content  the  father 
and  founder  of  an  evangel  that  was  not  the  Lord's,  but 
the  voice  of  all  true  history  testifies  that  his  only  claim 
to  remembrance  rests  on  the  fact  that  he  pushed 
freedom  of  thought  or  assertion  and  pride  of  under- 
standing to  an  extreme  limit  by  his  revolutionary 
break  with  the  Christian  traditions  and  the  established 
faith  of  fifteen  centuries ;  a  merit,  if  we  can  call  it  such, 
which  he  shares  in  common  with  every  heretic,  inno- 
vator, or  reformer,  who  has  troubled  the  Church  of 
Christ,  from  Alexander,  the  Coppersmith,  or  Simon 
Magnus,  down  to  George  Rapp  and  Joe  Smith,  one 
of  the  few  Americans  who  figured  as  a  founder  of  a 
"new  religion."  This  has  made  him  a  hero  forever 
with  all  infidels,  materialists  and  unbelievers  of  every 
class,  for  they  feel,  and  they  are  logically  right,  that  he 
was  their  precursor,  the  first  to  make  possible  the  over- 
throw of  the  Christian  "superstition"  and  open  the 
way  for  the  triumph  of  reason  and  the  new  era  of 
light  that  they  imagine  is  to  succeed  Gospel  darkness. 
But  the  most  ardent  devotees  and  admirers  of  this  false 
hero  must,  if  they  are  thoroughly  acquainted  with  his 
teachings,  admit  that  he  knew  nothing  of  religious 
liberty  or  freedom  of  conscience,  much  less  believed 
in  it,  as  we  understand  the  phrase.    No  doubt,  he  used 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  255 

his  private  judgment  freely  enough,  indeed  with  ra- 
tionaHstic  boldness,  iii  regard  to  the  Scriptures,  but 
did  he  ever  dream  that  it  was  a  right  belonging  to  all 
Christians,  that  the  Protestant  crowds  whom  he  drew 
out  with  him  from  ''the  bondage  of  the  Roman  Anti- 
christ" possessed  that  right  or  that  his  own  followers 
and  fellow-religionists  had  the  privilege  of  follow- 
ing their  own  private  view  in  any  religious  matter 
whatever?  His  practical  teaching  was  everlastingly 
to  the  contrary. 

All  men  were  free  to  differ  from  the  Pope,  to  reject 
his  teaching,  to  curse  him  to  the  lowest  depths,  were 
even  invited  and  encouraged  to  slay  him  like  a  wolf  or 
robber,  and  wash  their  hands  in  his  blood  and  that  of 
his  cardinals  and  other  adherents,  but  they  must  not 
dare  to  differ  from  Luther,  who  never  doubted  his  own 
personal  inspiration  and  his  own  infallibility.  Piously 
believing  himself  to  be  an  authoritative  judge,  both  of 
the  meaning  and  of  the  authenticity  of  Scripture,  did  he 
not  compel,  with  unrelenting  rigor,  all  his  friends  and 
disciples  to  subscribe  to  his  doctrinal  views,  and  even 
to  his  capricious  changes  of  opinion  ?  Did  he  not  when 
some,  like  Carlstadt,  Lemnius,  Wickel,  Agricola, 
Schwenkfeld  and  others,  rebelled  against  the  shameful 
slavery  in  which  he  held  them,  make  them  the  objects 
of  his  relentless  hate  and  enmity?  Did  he  not  manifest 
his  tyrannical  and  revengeful  spirit  against  the  peasants 
who  differed  from  him  when  he  urged  the  princes  to 
"choke  like  mad  dogs"  the  unhappy  victims  whom  his 
own  teachings  had  led  into  their  evil  courses?  Did 
he  not  hate  all  who  presumed  to  dissent  from  his 
opinions  and  follow  a  religious  belief  of  their  own  and, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Sacramentarians,  Zurichers  and 
others,  did  he  not  call  them  fanatics  and  factious  sec- 
tarians, his  sworn  enemies,  soul-murderers,  damned 
blasphemers,  lying  mouths  with  hearts  thoroughly  pos- 
sessed by  the  devil?  Did  he  not  damn  to  hell's  lowest 
depths  his  own  dissenting  Protestant  brethren  and  did 
not  the  shocking  condition  of  his  intolerant  mind  make 
him  look  upon  Jew  and  Catholic  as  such  outlaws  that 


256  The  Facts  About  Luther 

judicial  murder  or  private  assassination  were  lawful 
and  commendable  in  their  case? 

But  it  is  useless  to  ask  any  more  questions.  The 
well-informed  know  that  Luther's  gospel  in  practise 
was  the  gospel  of  hate  toward  all  who  conscientiously- 
refused  to  accept  it.  Menzel  declares  that  *'this  in- 
tolerant hatred  was  as  truly  a  part  of  the  religion  of  the 
reformers  as  belief  in  the  infallibility  of  the  Church 
was  for  Catholics."  Is  it  any  wonder  that  a  gospel, 
good  only  inasmuch  as  it  afforded  a  plausible  shield 
and  cover  to  its  f ramer's  bitter  intolerance,  should  lead 
its  upholders  to  persecution  for  conscience's  sake  and 
move  its  blind  dupes  to  rioting,  violence  and  the  horrors 
of  war  ? 

European  history  for  the  last  three  hundred  years 
and  more  is  Httle  beside  a  record  of  the  trampling 
under  foot  of  almost  every  element  of  popular  govern- 
ment and  the  imposition  of  the  intolerable  yoke  of 
absolute  despotism,  with  union  of  Church  and  State, 
on  the  necks  of  the  suffering  multitudes.  In  the  good 
old  times  the  people,  as  John  Quincy  Adams  said  of 
the  Swiss  cantons  in  a  speech  he  once  made  at  Builalo, 
''loved  liberty  and  therefore  remained  Catholic."  Every 
important  element  of  free  government,  popular  repre- 
sentation, trial  by  jury,  exemption  from  taxation 
without  the  consent  of  the  governed,  habeas  corpus, 
and  the  great  fundamental  principle,  that  all  power 
emanates  from  the  people,  were  generally  recognized 
and  firmly  established.  All  these  blessings  Catholics 
enjoyed  for  centuries  before  the  Reformation  was  even 
dreamt  of.  With  its  advent  seditions  and  tumults, 
civic  factions  and  religious  dissensions,  distrust  among 
those  who  had  been  hitherto  united  as  brethren,  ap- 
peared on  all  sides  and  paved  the  way  for  the  omni- 
potence of  the  princes  when  absolute  and  uncontrolled 
despotism  reigned  on  the  one  hand,  and  dreadful 
anarchy  on  the  other. 

Scherr,  an  enemy  of  the  Catholic  Church,  puts  the 
blame  on  Luther  for  the  absolute  desootism  and  union 
of  Church  and  State  in  every  place  in  Germany  where 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  257 

the  Reformation  obtained  a  solid  footing.  In  his 
'German  Culture,"  Third  edition,  page  260,  he  says: 
"Luther  was  the  originator  of  the  doctrine  of  uncon- 
ditional surrender  to  civil  power.  That  two  and  five 
make  seven  he  preached,  that  you  know.  But  if  the  civil 
government  should  proclaim  that  two  and  five  are 
eight,  then  you  m.ust  believe  it  against  your  better 
knowledge  and  sense.  That  explains  why  so  many 
German  princes  took  so  kindly  to  the  servile  policies 
of  Lutheranism." 

That  shifty  position  of  Luther  inaugurated  a  period 
of  revolution  on  the  one  hand  and  tyranny  and  abso- 
lutism on  the  other,  so  that  ever  since  governments  and 
subjects  are  at  all  times  at  swords'  points  and  can 
never  regain  their  balance  until  the  cause  of  the  evil 
is  removed. 

When  in  this  age  of  ours  revolution  walks  like  a 
destroying  angel  among  the  nations  of  the  earth  and 
breathes  death  from  its  nostrils  among  the  peaceful 
inhabitants  thereof ;  when  the  rulers  upon  their  thrones 
are  unsafe;  when  in  this  very  land  of  liberty,  calling 
itself  Protestant,  a  Booth  strikes  down  the  most 
peaceful  of  men,  the  kindly  Lincoln ;  a  Guiteau  destroys 
the  useful  life  of  a  Garfield;  when  at  the  dawn  of  the 
twentieth  century,  a  ruler  chosen  by  his  fellow  citizens 
is  murdered  by  the  hands  of  the  assassin  Czolgosz 
while  enjoying  the  quiet  hospitality  of  a  sovereign 
State;  and  when  you  ask  for  the  reason  that  produced 
such  murderous  outrages,  we  bid  you  turn  to  Luther 
and  his  rebellious  teachings  announced  and  embodied 
in  the  work  styled  falsely  '^Reformation,"  producing 
the  result  of  a  deformation.  Luther  is  its  father,  the 
sixteenth  century  its  cradle  and  autocracy  its  pro- 
tector and  high  priest. 

If  the  world  to-day  rejoices  in  such  liberty  as  it 
possesses,  it  is  indebted,  be  it  remembered,  to  no  prin- 
ciple or  tendency  born  of  the  religious  upheaval  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  Luther  taught,  preached  and  exem- 
plified in  action  the  propriety  and  the  need  of  civil  and 
religious  persecution.     All  his  followers  in  rebellion, 


258  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Calvin,  Beza,  Giistavus  Vasa  and  the  rest,  believed 
in  and  advocated  the  right  and  duty  to  persecute  for 
civic  and  religious  convictions.  The  policy  of  all  the 
Reformers  and  of  all  the  nations  that  became  Protes- 
tant was  from  the  beginning  guided  by  this  beHef  and 
was  always  marked  by  the  immediate  promulgation  of 
laws  against  Catholics  and  dissenters.  Civil  and 
religious  liberty  came  only  after  the  Reformation 
movement  had  run  its  disastrous  course.  Freedom 
of  conscience  is  a  reaction  rather  than  a  result. 

It  is  well  to  remember  that  when  Christ  organized 
His  Church  He  commissioned  her  not  only  to  save 
each  individual  in  the  human  family  from  the  wrath 
to  come,  but  Pie  commanded  her  to  teach  the  peoples 
in  their  organized  capacity  that  God  is  Sovereign  Lord 
over  all,  that  righteousness  exalteth  a  nation,  and  that 
the  body  politic,  no  less  than  the  individual  body,  must 
be  kept  pure,  undefiled  and  uncorrupted.  This  saving 
teaching  the  Catholic  Church  has  always  and  unflinch- 
ingly proclaimed  from  her  pulpit,  in  the  confessional 
and  in  the  schoolhouse.  The  nations  that  heeded  the 
lesson  and  the  governments  that  did  not  dispute  the 
authority  of  the  teacher  became  the  powerful  empires 
and  kingdoms  of  the  world,  the  framers  of  a  system 
of  jurisprudence  which  has  never  been  excelled,  the 
husbandmen  of  a  civilization  that  was  most  glorious 
and  enduring,  the  benefactors  of  humanity  and  the 
patrons  of  art  and  science — everything  that  adorns 
human  life  and  makes  for  the  uplift  and  ennobling  of 
society.  Those  docile  nations  received  their  strength, 
their  influence  and  their  support  from  the  Church, 
whose  protector  in  turn  they  were. 

But  in  the  sixteenth  century  a  most  disastrous 
calamity  swept  over  Christendom.  The  old  bonds  of 
religion  and  authority  were  broken.  Civil  government 
became  envious  of  God's  Sovereignty  and  fortwith 
aided  and  manipulated  a  fearful  and  blithing  heresy 
which  demoralize!  national  life,  stimulated  revolution 
and  encouraged  lawlessness.  Then  rebellion  against 
the  Church  of  Christ  became  a  dogma  of  civil  author- 


Luther  a  Fomentor  of  Rebellion  259 

ity  and  the  aim  of  subjecting  her  to  civil  power  was 
openly  and  shamelessly  advocated.  The  new  goddess 
of  liberty,  "the  sovereignty  of  the  people,"  with  an  ex- 
tinguished light  in  her  hand,  was  proclaimed  the  Queen 
of  the  World,  and,  while  the  people  were  enticed  by 
her  coquettish  ways  to  worship  at  her  shrines  the 
rulers  forged  the  chains  for  the  victims  which  they 
were  to  lead  away  captives. 

Ever  since  Luther's  rebellion  genius  and  learning, 
wit  and  satire,  eloquence  and  poetry,  sophistry  and 
specious  reasoning  have  been  employed  to  ridicule, 
destroy  and  stamp  out  of  the  mind  and  action  of  men 
the  principle  of  Divine  and  human  authority.  Prot- 
estant Christianity  squeezed  it  out  of  its  system ;  it 
has  been  driven  out  of  domestic  life ;  and  it  is  treated 
with  scorn  in  governmental  circles.  Indeed  there  is 
to-day  little  or  no  regard  for  legitimate  authority 
either  in  the  home  or  in  organized  society.  The 
authority  entrusted  to  the  head  of  the  family  is  almost 
entirely  discarded.  The  person  of  the  chief  magistrate 
of  City,  State  or  Nation  is  treated  with  disrespect  and 
the  tribunal  of  justice  is  hailed  with  contempt.  Majesty 
is  no  longer  attached  to  law.  This  denial  of  authority 
has  demoralized  all  conception  of  respect  for  superi- 
ors, for  property  rights,  for  individual  liberty  and  the 
very  foundation  stones  of  the  national  structure  are 
being  moved  one  by  one,  so  that  the  structure  itself 
is  in  danger  of  tottering  and  of  falling  asunder.  The 
general  aversion  to  the  guidance  of  legitimate  and 
Divinely  established  law,  which  Luther's  loose  and 
immoral  teachings  introduced  into  the  world,  and 
which  have  come  down  to  our  day,  must  be  removed 
if  domestic  happiness  and  national  prosperity  would 
bless  the  land,  its  homes  and  its  people.  It  is  only 
when  men  render  to  God  the  things  that  are  God's 
and  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's  that  brother- 
ly love,  a  common  feeling  of  kinship  and  a  readiness 
to  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder,  one  for  all  and  all  for 
one,  forming  one  powerful  army,  that  the  uplift,  ad- 
vancement and  sanctification  of  mankind  shall  bless 


260  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  earth.    ^'Unless  the  Lord,"  as  the  Holy  Spirit  says, 
"rules  the  city  in  vain  rule  they  who  rule." 

Luther  and  his  Protestantism,  on  the  contrary,  pro- 
claimed the  false  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings 
and  the  unequalled  absolutism  of  rulers  and,  as  might 
be  expected,  freedom  was  destroyed,  sedition  promoted 
and  the  security  not  only  of  all  kinds  of  property  but 
even  of  human  life  was  endangered. 

When  we  consider  Luther's  teaching  and  practical 
behavior  and  that  of  his  fellow  instigators  of  rebellion 
regarding  civil  and  religious  liberty  and  see  how  they 
struck  at  the  free  institutions  brought  down  from  the 
Middle  Ages,  only  to  introduce  in  their  stead  a  reign 
of  centralized  despotism  from  which  we  are  but  slowly 
recovering,  we  may  well  and  justly  say  with  the  Protes- 
tant Hallam:  "It  is  strange  to  see  men  professing  all 
the  time  our  modern  creed  of  charity  and  toleration 
extol  these  sanguinary  spirits  of  the  sixteenth  century." 
(Const.  History.  Vol.  I,  ch.  HI,  p.  147.) 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
Luther  on  Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience. 

WHEN  God  created  man  He  united  to  a  material 
body  a  spiritual  soul  endowed  with  faculties  that 
not  only  proclaim  his  dignity  and  nobility,  but  tell  him 
that  he  is  to  be  eternally  happy  or  miserable  according 
to  the  good  or  bad  use  he  makes  of  these  gifts  in  this 
world.  One  of  the  principal  perfections  with  which 
man  is  endowed  is  the  faculty  of  free-will.  After  his 
own  existence,  there  is  no  truth  he  realizes  more  vividly 
in  his  inner  consciousness  than  the  possession  of  free- 
will. Through  this  faculty  man's  soul  is  enabled, 
according  to  its  liking,  to  do  what  it  pleases,  act  or  not 
act,  decide  in  such  or  such  a  manner,  and  among 
different  impressions,  choose  one  and  attach  itself 
to  it  in  such  wise  that  it  becomes  insensible  to  every 
other,  as  occurs  so  often  in  the  phenomenon  of  ab- 
straction, where  the  mind,  exclusively  occupied  with 
one  object,  hears  nothing,  feels  nothing,  sees  nothing 
that  is  passing  around  it. 

This  faculty  of  free-will  differentiates  man  from 
all  other  creatures  that  surround  him.  Whilst  matter 
is  blindly  submissive  to  the  action  of  external  agencies 
and  other  creatures  obey  a  superior  immutable  will, 
which  constrains  them  always  and  everywhere  to 
execute  its  commands,  it  is  man's  God-given  privilege 
to  think,  reason  and  will  freely.  His  soul  acts  or  does 
not  act ;  it  wishes  or  it  does  not  wish ;  it  chooses  or 
does  not  choose ;  while  doing  one  thing  it  perceives 
perfectly  well  that  it  m.ieht  do  another  instead.  If 
the  action  is  good,  the  sonl  experiences  joy;  if  bad, 
remorse ;  for  it  feels  that  it  is  free  not  to  act 
imorooerly.  There  is  no  one  amonq:  us  unacquainted 
with  the  sentiment  of  pleasure  or  pain,  which  follows 
the  commission  of  a  good  or  a  bad  action.  This 
sentiment  we  could  not  experience  if  we  had  not  been 
free  to  act  as  we  choose;  we  could  not  then  merit 


263  The  Facts  About  Luther 

either  recompense  or  chastisement.  Without  free-will 
we  should  move  as  mere  machines.  All  things 
would  be  equal,  since  all  things  would  be  compulsory. 
In  this  condition  it  would  be  absurd  and  unjust  to 
punish  vice  and  reward  virtue ;  or  rather,  there  would 
be  neither  good  nor  evil,  neither  vice  nor  virtue. 
Accordingly,  God  would  be  unjust  in  rewarding  some 
and  punishing  others;  but  if  God  were  unjust,  He 
would  no  longer  be  God;  He  would  no  longer  be 
anything;  the  world  would  be  an  effect  without  a 
cause.  Such  is  the  abyss,  Gaume  tells  us,  into  which 
all  fall  after  a  few  steps  if  they  deny  the  free-will 
of  the  soul. 

The  liberty  or  freedom  from  interior  necessity  or 
compulsion  we  enjoy  as  thinking  and  reasonable  beings 
is  the  subjective  basis  of  all  moral,  religious,  civil 
and  social  order.  On  this  inestimable  privilege  of 
self-determination  the  Catholic  Church  has  always 
laid  great  stress  and  has  ever  uniformly  and  con- 
sistently considered  it  as  the  foundation  of  all  man's 
worship  of  God  and  all  communication  with  Him. 
In  His  merciful  designs  He  willed  "that  all  men  be 
saved  and  come  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth."  To 
help  them  to  fulfill  His  will  and  to  acquire  eternal 
happiness,  He  gives  His  grace  to  all  without  excep- 
tion. In  the  bestowal  of  His  heavenly  assistance  to 
man  God  leaves  him  entirely  free  to  receive  or  to 
reject  it.  Man's  freedom  of  choice  ever  remains  in 
this  life  his  own  peculiar  possession  to  do  with  it 
whatsoever  he  pleases  and  select  for  himself  a  right 
or  a  wrong  course  regarding  his  eternal  destiny. 
Whilst  God  is  ever  ready  to  assist  man  to  arrive  at  a 
wholesome  and  unfettered  decision,  yet  He  will  not 
overrule,  dominate,  or  derange  the  will  of  man  to 
deprive  it  of  its  freedom  of  choice  between  good  and 
evil.  God  made  man  without  his  co-operation,  but, 
as  St.  Augustine  says,  "He  will  not  snve  without  it." 
Man  in  co-operating  with  God's  grace  does  not  thereby 
lose  his  freedom  of  will.  Under  the  action  of  His 
grace  man  retains  all  his  power  of  freedom  and, 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      263 

therefore,  all  the  efforts  he  makes  in  the  salvation 
of  his  soul  are  **as  an  act  organically  one,  effected 
equally  by  God's  grace  and  by  his  free  co-operation." 
"Free-will,"  as  St.  Augustine  aptly  remarks,  "is  not 
destroyed  because  it  is  assisted  by  grace ;  it  is  assisted 
because  it  has  not  been  destroyed." 

To  this  basic  truth  of  sane  reason,  the  pillar  of  all 
religious  belief,  Luther  was  decidedly  and  unalterably 
antagonistic.  It  mattered  not  to  him  that  the  vast 
majority  of  the  human  race  believed  in  the  freedom  of 
the  human  will  and  manifested  on  every  page  of  his- 
tory since  the  world  began  acknowledgemnt  of  the 
sense  of  duty  and  the  force  of  the  requirements  of  the 
moral  order.  In  spite  of  the  general  belief  of  mankind, 
the  teaching  of  Scripture  and  the  docrine  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church  on  man's  power  of  choice  for  what  is  good, 
he  gradually  came  to  hold  and  to  advocate  that  man 
does  not  possess  freedom  of  will,  and  is,  therefore,  in- 
capable of  either  merit  or  guilt  in  the  sight  of  his  Cre- 
ator. Moving  along  the  old  lines  of  his  distaste  for 
good  works  and  for  so-called  self-righteousness,  he 
came  to  exaggerate  the  results  of  original  sin  with  re- 
gard to  doing  what  is  good  and  imagined  that  the  fall 
of  our  first  parents  warped  and  obliterated  the  freedom 
of  moral  choice  by  giving  rise  to  concupiscence  and  the 
movements  of  inordinate  passion.  The  false  concep- 
tion he  formed  of  the  corruption  of  human  nature 
by  original  sin  and  concupiscence  led  him  on  to  the 
denial  of  all  liberty  on  man's  part  for  doing  what  is 
good  and  to  the  adoption  of  the  idea  of  "the  imputation 
of  the  merits  of  Christ  as  a  cloak  to  cover  and  hide 
all  iniquity."  The  Catholic  doctrine,  which  holds  that 
free-will  had  not  been  destroyed  by  original  sin,  and 
that  in  one  who  acts  aright,  it  is  not  interfered  with 
by  Goi's  grace,  he  thought  "did  not  allow  to  free-will 
its  full  rights  since  it  ostensibly  does  all  and  obliterates 
every  free  deed  in  the  domain  of  salvation."  Original 
sin,  which  the  Catholic  Church  attributes  to  the  vol- 
untary  weakness   of   man   and   the   artifice   of   the 


264  The  Facts  About  Luther 

seducer,  he  had,  as  we  shall  show   further  on,  the 
temerity  to  attribute  to  the  thrice  Holy  God. 

In  scanning  Luther's  works  issued  from  1516  to 
1524,  we  frequently  discover  certain  emphatic  state- 
ments on  the  question  of  man's  free-will,  which  give 
a  clear  insight  into  his  trend  of  thought  and  show- 
plainly  his  intention  to  develop  his  new  theories  and 
to  make  them  the  core  and  kernel  of  all  his  teaching. 
From  out  the  vast  number  of  the  false  assertions  he 
made  during  this  period  we  present  the  following: 
"Everything  happens  of  necessity";  "Man,  when  he 
does  what  is  evil,  is  not  master  of  himself";  "Man 
does  evil  because  God  ceases  to  work  in  him" ; 
"By  virtue  of  His  nature  God's  ineluctable  concursus 
determines  everything,  even  the  m.ost  trivial,"  hence 
"inevitable  necessity"  compels  us  in  "all  that  v/e  do 
and  everything  that  happens" ;  "God  alone  moves  and 
impels  all  that  He  has  made,"  nay,  "He  decrees  all 
things  in  advance  by  His  infallible  will"  including 
the  inevitable  damnation  of  those  who  are  damned. 
These  assertions  indicate  clearly  and  unmistakably 
his  position  and  feeling  regarding  the  doctrine  of 
human  will  and  the  liberty  of  the  thinking  being. 
Although  his  views  are  as  false  as  they  are  blas- 
phemous, they  surprise  none  familiar  with  his  imscrip- 
tural  teaching  on  justification  by  faith  alone,  which 
totally  deprived  human  action  of  all  moral  character 
and  mankind  of  all  moral  responsibility.  In  order  to 
give  some  appearance  of  logical  coherence  to  his  new 
system  of  religion  based  on  the  general  corruption  of 
human  nature  due  to  original  sin,  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand how  naturally  he  came  to  deny  the  freedom  of 
the  human  will,  to  excuse  human  culpability  and  to 
minimize  human  responsibility.  In  his  estimation 
man's  will  was  totally  depraved  and,  therefore,  pos- 
sessed no  self-determining  power.  Fathering  this  view 
of  man's  will,  which  destroys  all  moral  liberty,  he  thus 
revived  and  reproduced  in  a  somewhat  new  form  the 
ancient  Gnostic  and  Manichean  error  and  forthwith 
made  this  teaching  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  his 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      265 

new  system  of  belief.  So  confident  and  assured  was 
he  of  the  soundness  and  correctness  of  his  position 
regarding  man's  will  that  he  wanted  none  to  attack 
or  dispute  his  favorite  teaching,  for  to  do  so  "would," 
as  he  says,  ''place  the  knife  at  his  throat." 

To  those  who  have  been  taught  all  along  that  Luther 
was  the  one  great  champion  of  human  liberty,  it  must 
come  as  a  shocking  surprise  to  learn  for  the  first 
time  that  their  hero  persistently  denied  free-will  in 
man  and  considered  it,  to  use  his  own  words,  "a 
mere  empty  name."  It  is  true  that  at  times  in  some 
of  his  practical  writings  and  instructions  he  makes  ^t 
appear  as  though  the  Christian  were  free,  with  the 
help  of  grace,  to  follow  the  path  of  salvation.  He 
expresses  this  view  in  his  exposition  of  the  Penitential 
Psalms,  the  Our  Father  and  the  Ten  Commandments. 
In  his  sermons  on  the  Decalogue  he  even  calls  the 
opinion  "godless,"  that  any  man  is  forced  by  necessity 
to  sin  and  not  rather  led  to  commit  it  by  his  own 
inclination.  "All  that  God  has  made  is  good  and  thus 
all  natural  inclination  is  to  what  is  good."  In  his 
tract  "On  the  Freedom  of  the  Christian  Man"  written 
in  October,  1520,  he  teaches  that  the  Christian  is  "free 
lord  of  all  and  subject  to  none."  Thus,  in  such  works 
as  he  intended  for  the  furtherance  of  the  Christian 
life,  he  speaks  to  the  faithful  as  though  they  still 
enjoyed  moral  freedom  of  the  will  and  liberty  of 
choice.  But  when  we  glance  at  his  "Commentary  on 
Romans,"  the  "Resolutions"  on  the  Leipzig  Disputa- 
tion and  the  "Assertio  omnium  articulorum,"  written 
in  defense  of  his  condemned  propositions,  we  find 
his  language  is  the  very  reverse  of  that  used  in  his 
sermons,  expositions  and  practical  writings.  These 
works  do  not  pass  over  his  denial  of  free-will  in 
silence.  They  are  most  outspoken  in  opposition  to 
free-will  and  contain  in  substance  all  the  strictures 
embodied  later  on  in  his  treatise  entitled  "Slave  Will'* 
In  one  of  the  works  iust  named  Luther  says:  "The 
world  has  allowed  itself  to  be  seduced  by  the  flattering 
doctrine  of  free-will  which  is  pleasing  to  nature."    If 


266  The  Facts  About  Luther 

any  point  of  his  teaching,  then  certainly  that  of  the 
**captive  will"  is  to  be  accounted  one  of  the  "most 
sublime  mysteries  of  our  faith  and  religion,  which 
only  the  godless  know  not,  but  to  which  the  true 
Christian  holds  fast."    (Assertio,  etc.,  pp.  95,  158.) 

This  statement  of  Luther  shows  how  close  to  his 
heart  was  his  pet  teaching  on  the  absence  of  free-will 
in  man.  But  whilst  he  and  many  of  his  ardent  fol- 
lowers were  satisfied  with  the  strange  pronouncement, 
there  were  millions  who  did  not  consider  his  "captive 
will"  as  anything  but  degrading  and  demoralizing. 
From  the  beginning  its  announcement  and  tendency 
to  unsettle  moral  conditions  were  discerned  by  the 
enlightened  in  the  community  and  the  prevailing  con- 
victions of  humanity  resented  the  insult  embodied  in 
the  teaching.  Opposition  was  met  with  in  almost  all 
quarters.  Many,  even  in  the  wide  circle  of  his  own 
readers,  were  startled  at  his  bold  attacks  on  free-will 
and  not  a  few,  considering  his  inconsistency  on  the 
point,  now  admitting  and  again  denying  the  faculty  of 
man's  freedom,  and  weighing  the  consequences  of  his 
final  adoption  of  the  "captive  will"  as  one  of  the  "most 
sublime  mysteries  of  his  faith  and  religion,"  aban- 
doned his  cause  and  refused  longer  to  be  associated 
with  his  movement.  The  promulgation  of  his  views 
on  free-will  caused  widespread  scandal  and  opened 
the  way  to  the  licentious  for  the  commission  of  the 
grossest  violations  of  law  divine  and  civil. 

"Capito,"  Grisar  says,  "declared  himself  openly 
against  Luther's  theories  concerning  the  absolute 
enslavement  of  the  will.  The  Humanist  Mosellanus 
(Peter  Schade),  a  great  admirer  of  the  Wittenbergers, 
spoke  so  strongly  at  Leipzig  against  the  propositions 
deduced  from  Luther's  teaching  on  predestination  to 
hell,  that  the  latter  was  warned  of  what  had  occurred. 
Many  who  had  previously  been  favorably  disposed 
to  Luther,  were  repelled  by  his  teaching  on  the 
enslaved  will  and  fell  away  then  or  later,  for  instance, 
the  learned  naturalist  George  Agricola." 

Luther  during  a  period  of  seven  or  eight  years 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      267 

labored  with  all  his  energy  by  writing  and  preaching 
to  destroy  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  the  traditional 
teaching  of  the  Church  on  the  important  question  of 
free-will,  justification  and  pardon.  His  efforts  were 
not  without  results  among  the  ill-informed,  the  lovers 
of  novelty  and  the  rebellious.  The  confusion  and 
disorder,  which  followed  everywhere  as  a  consequence 
of  his  demoralizing  teachings,  threatened  to  under- 
mine the  very  foundations  of  society  itself.  Among 
the  vast  number  who  grew  alarmed  at  the  frightful 
condition  noticeable  on  all  sides  was  Erasmus,  whom 
Luther  endeavored  by  flattery  to  win  over  to  his 
side  and  whom  he  called  the  "Glory  and  Hope  of 
Germany.'*  This  man  was  a  prolific  author  and  wrote 
in  the  most  fluent  Latin.  He  enjoyed  great  fame 
in  the  domain  of  learning  and,  by  common  consent, 
was  the  first  authority  of  the  day  on  classical  and 
critical  studies.  Justly  renowned  for  his  general 
literary  culture  and  familiarity  with  religions  and 
historical  questions,  he  was  just  the  man  the  occasion 
required  to  hold  Luther  up  to  the  world  in  his  true 
colors  and  help  to  diminish  the  corruption  then  every- 
where rampant  on  account  of  the  Reformer's  loose 
doctrine.  Though  timid  by  nature  and  preferring  any 
other  task  to  attacking  Luther,  he  launched  forth  in 
1524,  at  Basle,  his  work,  "De  libcro  arhitrio  diatribe," 
which  administered  a  severe  blow  to  Luther  and 
enlightened  all  on  the  fallacy  and  dangers  of  the 
religion  of  the  ''enslaved  will."  Many  cultured  lay- 
men, such  as  Duke  George  of  Saxony,  Ulrich  Zasius 
and  Martin  Lipsius,  expressed  their  approbation  of 
Erasmus'  work  in  defense  of  free-will.  Melanchthon, 
Luther's  closest  friend,  praised  the  moderation  with 
which  the  champion  of  free-will  treated  the  subject 
Even  Luther  himself  admitted  the  kindness  displayed 
by  Erasmus  in  this  work.  According  to  Vedder,  a 
non-Catholic  writer  of  our  own  day,  "this  great 
scholar  (Erasmus)  had  little  difficulty  in  pointing  out 
Luther's  errors  and  in  showing  that  his  doctrine  of 
the  will  is  incompatible  with  reason,  experience  and 


268  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  general  tenor  of  Scripture.'*  In  a  tone  of  studied 
moderation  and  without  a  trace  of  bitterness, 
"Erasmus,"  to  use  the  words  of  Grisar,  "dwelt  with 
emphasis  and  success  on  the  fact,  that  according  to 
Luther,  not  merely  every  good,  but  also  every  evil 
must  be  referred  to  God;  this  was  in  contradiction 
with  the  nature  of  God  and  was  excluded  by  His 
Holiness.  According  to  Luther,  God  inflicted  eternal 
damnation  on  sinners,  whereas  they,  in  so  far  as 
they  were  not  free  agents,  could  not  be  held  respon- 
sible for  their  sins;  what  Luther  had  advanced 
demanded  that  God  should  act  contrary  to  His  eternal 
Goodness  and  Mercy;  it  would  also  follow  that 
earthly  laws  and  penalties  were  superfluous,  because 
without  free-will  no  one  could  be  responsible;  finally, 
the  doctrine  involved  the  overthrow  of  the  whole  moral 
order." 

In  pointing  out  the  practical  difficulties  of  Luther's 
reckless  assertions,  Erasmus  called  on  the  heresiarch 
to  rtply  to  his  arguments,  which  may  be  briefly  summed 
up  as  follows:  "If  the  will  of  man  is  not  free  to 
choose  the  good  who  will  try  to  lead  a  good  life  ?  Will 
not  everyone  find  a  ready  excuse  for  all  sins  and 
vices  by  saying:  I  could  not  help  falling?  What  is 
the  meaning  of  God's  lav/,  if  the  people  for  whom  it 
was  made  cannot  obey?  The  whole  legislation  of 
God  becomes  a  farce  and  a  mockery  if  man  has  not 
the  power  to  observe  it.  How,  finally,  can  God  punish 
or  reward  those  who  cannot  choose  between  good  and 
evil,  but  merely  do  what  they  must?"  These  were 
practical  questions,  but  Luther  never  attempted  to 
deal  with  them  seriously. 

"Erasmus,  in  defending  free-will,"  writes  A.  Taube, 
a  Protestant  theologian,  "fights  for  responsibility,  duty, 
guilt  and  repentance,  ideas  which  are  essential  to 
Christian  piety.  He  vindicates  the  capacity  of  the 
natural  man  for  salvation,  without  which  the  identity 
between  the  old  and  the  new  man  cannot  be  .main- 
tained, and  without  which  the  new  life  imparted  by 
God's  grace  ceases  to  be  a  result  of  moral  effort  and 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       269 

becomes  rather  the  last  tCx^rn  of  a  magical  process. 
He  combats  the  fatalism  which  is  incompatible  with 
Christian  piety  and  which  Luther  contrived  to  avoid 
only  by  his  want  of  logic;  he  vindicates  the  moral 
character  of  the  Christian  religion,  to  which,  from 
the  standpoint  of  Luther's  theology,  it  was  impossible 
to  do  justice."  (A.  Taube,  "Luther's  Lehre  uber  die 
Freiheit,  etc.,"  Gottingen,  1901,  p.  46.) 

Although  the  work  of  Erasmus  reached  Luther  in 
September,  1524,  it  was  not  until  late  in  the  following 
year  that  a  reply  was  issued.  The  troubles  of  the 
Peasants'  War  and  his  marriage  to  a  kidnapped  nun 
engrossed  his  attention  to  the  exclusion  of  almost 
everything  besides.  He  was  inclined  at  first  to  treat 
his  opponent's  attack  with  contempt,  but  when  Kath- 
erine  Von  Bora  represented  to  him  "that  his  foes 
might  see  in  his  obstinate  silence  an  admission  of 
defeat,"  he  began  his  reply  and  composed  it,  as  he 
himself  admits,  in  excessive  haste.  To  this  work  he 
gave  the  title  "De  sei'vo  arbitrio" — "On  the  enslaved 
unll,"  which  was  borrowed  from  a  misunderstood 
saying  of  St.  Augustine.  In  this  famous  volume, 
Luther  defined  his  position  on  the  absence  of  free-will 
and  expressed  his  matured  convictions  that  man  is 
absolutely  devoid  of  freedom  of  choice,  even  in  the 
performance  of  works  not  connected  with  salvation 
and  moral  acts  generally.  Luther  was  very  proud  of 
this  work.  He  thought  it  was  unanswerable  and  defied 
Erasmus  and  even  the  devil  to  refute  it.  Notwith- 
standing the  high  estimate  he  conceived  of  this  treatise, 
it  is  well-known  that  many  in  his  own  day  regretted 
its  issue,  for  as  Kostlin-Kawerau  remarks,  "it  was 
a  stumbling  block  to  his  followers,  and  attempts  were 
made  to  explain  it  away  by  all  the  arts  of  violent 
exegesis."  Kattenbusch  says,  in  the  preface  of  his 
study  on  this  work,  that  "quite  rightly  it  caused  great 
scandal  and  wonder."  Vedder,  another  Protestant 
author,  says :  "Though  this  is  1)y  far  the  most  decent 
of  all  his  controversial  writings,  his  'Slave  Will' 
cannot  be  commended  to  controversialists  for  their 


270  The  Facts  About  Luther 

imitation.  He  cannot  deny  himself  the  pleasure  of 
an  occasional  mean  fling,  and  a  bitter  epithet  bursts 
forth  from  him  now  and  then,  as  if  it  were  unavv^ares, 
while  a  tone  of  ill-suppressed  rage  is  heard  through 
the  whole."     (Vedder,  p.  230.) 

The  tone  of  this  book  is  indeed  violent,  but,  what 
is  worse,  the  doctrine  it  advances  is  debasing  and 
wantonly  demoralizing.  As  one  wades  through  its 
dismal  pages,  it  is  impossible  to  refrain  from  asking 
how  any  man  claiming,  as  Luther  did,  to  be  a 
religious  reformer,  could  pen  anything  so  revolting  and 
so  shocking  to  the  common  sense  of  the  Christian 
heart  as  the  wild,  reckless  and  unfounded  assertions 
that  fill  it  from  cover  to  cover. 

It  is  not  possible  in  a  chapter  like  this  to  give  a  full 
review  of  Luther's  work  on  ''Slave  Will."  To  set 
forth  completely  the  whole  theory  of  his  enslaved  will 
would  require  volumes.  In  the  limited  space  at  our 
disposal  we  can  only  ofYer  the  reader  a  few  extracts, 
which  embody  his  teachings  and  are  fairly  represen- 
tative of  all  the  views  he  held  on  the  subject.  In 
order  to  remove  any  suggestion  of  bias  in  the  matter, 
we  quote  the  non-Catholic  Vedder's  findings.  "Luther," 
he  says,  "grounds  this  doctrine  of  the  will  in  the 
nature  of  God."  He  then  quotes  the  following  from  the 
Reformer's  work  on  "Slave  Will" :  "The  omnipotence 
of  God  makes  it,  that  the  wicked  cannot  evade  the 
motion  and  action  of  God,  but,  being  of  necessity  sub- 
ject to  it,  he  yields. .  .  God  cannot  suspend  His  omni- 
potence on  account  of  his  aversion,  nor  can  the  wicked 
man  change  his  aversion.  Wherefore  it  is  that  he  must 
of  necessity  continue  to  sin  and  err,  until  he  be 
amended  by  the  Spirit  of  God.  To  the  objection  that 
this  contradicts  our  ideas  of  goodness  and  justice, 
Luther  declares  that  whatever  God  wills  is  right,  purely 
because  He  wills  it;  God  is  that  being,  for  whose 
will  no  cause  or  reason  is  to  be  assigned  as  a  rule 
or  standard  by  which  it  acts;  seeing  that  nothing  is 
superior  or  equal  to  it,  but  it  is  itself  the  rule  of 
all  things.     For  if  it  acted  by  any  rule  or  standard, 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      271 

or  from  any  cause  or  reason,  it  would  no  longer  be 
the  will  of  God.  Wherefore,  what  God  wills  is  there- 
fore not  right  because  He  so  wills.  A  cause  and 
reason  are  assigned  for  the  will  of  the  creature,  but 
not  for  the  will  of  the  Creator,  unless  you  set  up, 
over  Him,  another  Creator."  ''Luther  thus  treats  us," 
says  Vedder,  "to  the  ultimate  absurdity  of  his  system, 
a  God  who  is  wholly  irrational,  and  acts  without  any 
reason,  or  else  He  could  not  be  God."  Is  not  this 
evidence  enough  to  brand  Luther  as  an  out  and  out 
enemy  of  God  and  man,  and  rank  him  among  the 
vilest  teachers  the  world  ever  produced? 

At  the  end  of  his  work  on  "Slave  Will"  the 
irreverent  author  sums  up  all  he  had  written  and 
appeals  to  God's  rule  and  to  His  unchangeable  predes- 
tination of  all  things,  even  the  most  insignificant; 
likewise  to  the  empire  of  the  devil  and  his  power 
over  spirits.  In  the  most  shameful  manner  and 
without  a  blush,  he  revives  the  old  Persian  idea  of 
two  eternal  principles  of  good  and  evil  contending 
continually  for  the  possession  of  man.  With  a  slight 
variation  of  the  ancient  debasing  doctrine  of  Manes, 
he  declares  that  man  is  the  merely  passive  subject  of 
a  contest  between  God  and  the  devil.  To  make  his 
meaning  evident,  he,  to  the  amazement  of  all,  com- 
pares man  to  a  beast  of  burden  who  is  compelled  to 
move  in  whatever  direction  the  rider  may  require. 

*'Man,"  he  says,  "is  like  a  horse.  Does  God  leap 
into  the  saddle?  The  horse  is  obedient  and  accom- 
modates itself  to  evei*y  movement  of  the  rider  and 
goes  whither  he  wills  it.  Does  God  throw  down  the 
reins?  Then  Satan  leaps  upon  the  back  of  the  animal, 
which  bends,  goes  and  submits  to  the  spurs  and 
caprices  of  its  new  rider.  The  will  cannot  choose  its 
rider  and  cannot  kick  against  the  spur  that  pricks  it. 
It  must  go  on  and  its  very  docility  is  a  disobedience 
or  a  sin.  The  only  struggle  possible  is  between  the 
two  riders,  who  dispute  the  momentary  possession  of 
the  steed,  and,  then,  is  fulfilled  the  saying  of  the 
Psalmist:     'I    am   become   like   a   beast    of   burden.' 


27Z  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Let  the  Christian,  then,  know  that  God  foresees  nothing 
contingently,  but  that  he  foresees,  proposes  and  acts 
from  His  internal  and  immutable  will.  This  is  the 
thunderbolt  that  shatters  and  destroys  free-will.  Hence 
it  comes  to  pass  that  whatever  happens,  happens 
according  to  the  irreversible  decrees  of  God.  There- 
fore, necessity,  not  free-will,  is  the  controlling  principle 
of  our  conduct.  God  is  the  author  of  what  is  evil 
in  us  as  well  as  of  what  is  good,  and,  as  He  bestows 
happiness  on  those  who  merit  it  not,  so  also,  does  He 
damn  others  who  deserve  not  their  fate."  (De  Servo 
Arbitrio,  in  op.  lat.  7,  113  seq.) 

This  parable  summarizes  the  whole  of  Luther's 
teaching  on  the  vital  and  all-important  subject  of  man's 
free-will.  It  expresses  in  the  most  deliberate  manner 
his  matured  conviction  on  the  question ;  and  so  sure 
is  he  of  the  soundness  of  his  view  that  he  declares 
it  to  be  the  very  core  and  basis  of  religion.  ''Without 
this  doctrine  of  the  enslaved  will,  the  supernatural 
character  of  Christianity  cannot,"  so  he  says,  "be 
maintained;  the  work  of  redemption  falls  to  the 
ground,  because  whoever  sets  up  free-will  cheats 
Christ  of  all  His  merit;  whoever  advocates  free-will 
brings  death  and  Satan  into  his  soul."  'To  me,"  he 
says  in  another  passage,  "the  defense  of  this  truth 
is  a  matter  of  supreme  and  eternal  importance.  I 
am  convinced  that  life  itself  should  be  set  at  stake 
in  order  to  preserve  it.  It  must  stand  though  the 
whole  world  be  involved  thereby  in  strife  and  tumult, 
nay,  even  fall  into  ruins." 

The  last  words  in  Luther's  book  on  "Slave  Will," 
Grisar  says,  "even  exceed  the  rest  in  confidence  and 
the  audacity  of  his  demand  that  his  work  should  be 
accepted  without  question  almost  takes  away  one's 
breath.  'In  this  book  I  have  not  merely  theorized; 
I  have  set  up  definite  propositions  and  these  I  shall 
defend;  no  one  will  I  permit  to  pass  judgment  on 
them  and  I  advise  all  to  submit  to  them.  May  the 
Lord    Whose    cause    is    here    vindicated/    he    says, 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       273 

addressing   himself   to    Erasmus,    'give    you    light   to 
make  of  you  a  vessel  to  His  honor  and  glory.    Amen.' 

No  one  has  ever  attempted  to  deny  the  existence, 
authenticity  and  authorship  of  this  book.  Some  of 
Luther's  admirers,  however,  have  endeavored  to 
defend  the  grotesque  theses  advanced  in  this  famous 
work  and  give  them  a  meaning  altogether  foreign  to 
their  expression,  development  and  spirit.  But  all  their 
arts  of  "violent  exegesis"  cannot  hide  or  remove  from 
the  pages  of  this  work  the  hard,  offensive,  saul- 
destroying  teaching  it  formulates.  No  amount  of 
enthusiasm  for  Luther's  standpoint  can  ever  wipe 
out  the  degrading  doctrine  of  despair  announced 
within  its  covers.  To  apologize  for  the  detestable 
teaching  by  claiming  that  *'it  was  essentially  Lutheran" 
will  never  down  the  scandal  and  wonder  it  gave  rise 
to.  All  who  are  honest  and  fearless  of  consequences 
must  admit  in  frankest  terms,  that  Luther's  teach- 
ing on  free-will,  as  expounded  in  his  book,  and 
explicitly  making  God  the  author  of  man's  evil 
thoughts  and  deeds,  cannot  but  lend  a  mighty  force 
to  the  passions  and  justify  the  grossest  violations  of 
the  moral  law.  Indeed,  the  enemy  of  souls,  as 
Anderdon  remarks,  ''could  not  inspire  a  doctrine  more 
likely  to  effect  his  wicked  designs  than  Luther's  teach- 
ing on  the  enslavement  of  the  human  will." 

When  we  stop  to  reflect  on  Luther's  favorite 
parable,  we  cannot  help  asking  ourselves  what  sort 
of  a  man  was  he  and  what  did  he  think  would  likely 
be  the  effect  on  the  simple  and  untrained  mind  of 
his  singular  doctrine  and  its  concomitant  despair?  Is 
not  the  man  portrayed  in  his  teaching?  Does  not  his 
teaching  show  the  confusion  of  his  mind  and  the 
lack  of  an  exact  logical  system?  And  does  not  his 
whole  theory,  born  of  personal  motives  and  fashioned 
to  suit  his  own  state  of  soul,  show  clearly  enough 
that  it  could  not  be  approved  of  heaven  or  help  to 
righteousness?  Think  of  what  this  erratic  man,  with 
all  his  presumptuous  belief  in  himself,  says,  and  then 
judge  for  yourselves  whether  or  not  his  doctrine  on 


274  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  enslaved  will  should  become,  as  he  wished,  the 
common  conviction  of  all  the  faithful,  which  none  can 
do  without,  and  which  he  made  the  very  basis  of 
his  new  Christianity.  What  man  in  his  senses  would 
subscribe  to  such  an  audacious  demand  and  accept 
such  a  singular  innovation  without  questioning  its 
inconsistency,  obscurity  and  confusion?  When  he 
says,  *'If  you  happen  to  have  Satan  for  a  rider,  you 
must  go  as  Satan  wills  and  there  is  no  help  for  it," 
does  he  not  debase  man  and  make  him  a  mere  tool, 
a  machine,  an  automaton?  Likening  him  to  a  ''beast 
of  burden,"  does  he  not  maintain  that  man  is  utterly 
powerless  ''by  reason  of  his  fallen  nature"  to  lead 
a  godly  life,  and  merit  by  the  practice  of  virtue  the 
rewards  of  eternal  happiness?  Does  he  not  say:  "It 
is  written  on  the  hearts  of  men  that  there  is  no  freedom 
of  will,"  that  "all  takes  place  in  accordance  with 
inexorable  necessity,"  and  that  even  "were  free-will 
offered  him,  he  should  not  care  to  have  it?"  But 
does  not  all  this  contradict  the  Spirit  of  God  when 
speaking  in  the  Book  of  Ecclesiasticus  He  says: 
"Before  man  is  life  and  death,  good  and  evil;  that 
which  he  shall  choose  shall  be  given  him." 

Luther,  unfortunately  for  himself  and  others,  would 
have  none  of  this  teaching  and  though  it  is  God's 
own  doctrine,  he,  in  his  extraordinary  self-confidence, 
boldly  and  blasphemously  maintained  that  man  has  not 
the  power  to  choose  between  "life  and  death,  good  and 
evil."  Thus  "the  law  of  liberty,"  as  St.  James 
declares,  "the  law  by  which  all  shall  be  judged,"  is 
ruthlessly  and  brutally  brushed  aside  by  the  arbitrary 
pronouncement  of  this  deluded  man  to  make  way  for 
the  spread  of  his  false,  degrading  and  fanciful  concept 
of  liberty,  the  liberty  of  the  horse  bridled,  bitted  and 
spurred,  the  horse  that  must  obey  his  rider,  which- 
ever of  the  two  contending  riders  represented  in  his 
profane  parable  occupies  the  saddle.  "It  is,"  he  says, 
"either  God  or  the  devil  that  rules;  man  has  no 
freedom  of  choice  and  is  absolutely  devoid  of  respon- 
sibility for  his  acts.    Having  lost  free-will,  man  cannot 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      275 

observe  the  precepts  of  the  Decalogue;  he  cannot 
master  his  passions ;  he  must  sin  as  long  as  he  lives." 
"As  God  pushes  him,  then  he  does  something  not 
through  free  will,  but  by  the  power  of  God;  and 
when  the  devil  pushes  him,  then  he  does  something 
not  through  free  will,  but  by  the  power  of  Satan  who 
takes  possession  of  him.  When  the  devil  takes  posses- 
sion of  some  man  or  leaves  him,  it  is  only  by  that 
arbitrary  will  by  which  God  wills  that  a  certain 
number  shall  be  damned  and  a  certain  number  shall 
be  saved.  Then  the  conclusion  is  simply  this:  that 
those  who  are  to  be  saved  are  to  be  saved  without 
any  regard  to  their  good  works  and  that  they  will 
be  saved;  that  there  is  nothing  in  heaven  or  earth 
that  can  keep  them  from  being  saved.  Why,  then, 
should  they  undertake  to  do  anything  themselves?  It 
matters  not  to  them ;  they  will  be  saved  anyway  what- 
ever they  do.  And,  as  for  those  unfortunate  ones 
who  are  left  behind  and  are  to  be  damned,  how  idle 
for  them  to  kick  against  the  arbitrary  decree !  They 
must  perish  anyway,  and  as  they  must  perish,  they 
ought  to  say  to  themselves :  'Let  us  eat  and  drink  and 
be  merry  for  to-morrow  we  die.'" 

The  foregoing  is  only  a  part  of  the  infamous  and 
degrading  teaching  propounded  without  a  blush  in 
Luther's  work  on  the  enslavement  of  the  human  will. 
There  is  much  besides  in  this  scandalous  volume  of 
such  a  despicable  nature  that  we  would  be  ashamed 
to  present  it  to  the  public  unless  forced  to  do  so  in 
the  interests  of  truth.  This,  like  almost  all  of  Luther's 
writings,  is  full  of  pitch  and,  in  reading  his  works, 
one  is  bound  to  look  well  to  his  hands  lest  they  be 
soiled. 

Luther's  teaching  on  the  loss  of  free-will  was,  on 
account  of  its  novelty  and  the  license  it  encouraged, 
soon  taken  up  and  zealously  advocated  by  many  who 
loved  error  rather  than  truth.  Among  those  who 
advocated  the  oracle  of  the  fiery  apostle,  we  will  name 
only  a  few  of  his  most  prominent  supporters. 

Melanchthon  comes  first  in  order.    He  was  Luther's 


276  The  Facts  About  Luther 

mild,  gentle  and  most  obsequious  friend.  In  the 
December  of  1521,  he  published  a  work  entitled  "Loci 
Communes  Rerum  Theologkarum,"  which  was  the  tech- 
nical exposition  of  Lutheranism  at  that  time.  In  this 
work  the  disciple  of  Luther  gives  clear  and  full  expres- 
sion to  his  master's  teaching.  **A11  that  happens,'* 
Melanchthon  says  there,  ''happens  of  necessity  in 
accordance  with  the  Divine  predestination ;  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  freedom  of  the  will."  As  might  be 
expected,  he  inveighed  in  his  work  against  the  Cath- 
olic theologians,  whom  he  accused  of  having  borrowed 
from  philosophy  and  imparted  into  Christianity  the 
--topious  doctrine  of  liberty,  a  doctrine  absolutely 
opposed  to  Scripture.  It  is,  also,  to  the  philosophy 
of  Plato,  according  to  him,  that  we  are  indebted  for 
the  equally  pernicious  word,  "reason."  It  is  of  interest 
to  remark  that  the  author  of  this  work  later  on,  when 
freed  from  the  tyranny  of  his  master,  came  to  a  more 
correct  view,  making  no  secret  of  his  rejection  of 
Luther's   determinism. 

Another  promoter  of  Luther's  doctrine  on  free-will 
was  Ulrich  Zwingle,  who  in  the  course  of  time  was 
denounced  by  the  friends  of  the  Reformer  as  a 
**false  prophet,  a  mountebank,  a  hog,  a  heretic."  This 
advocate  of  the  new  doctrine  of  Luther  was  ordained 
for  the  diocese  of  Constance,  Switzerland,  in  1506. 
From  the  opening  of  his  career  he  was  noted  for  his 
light-mindedness,  frivolity  and  slavery  to  sensual 
pleasures.  When  his  familiarity  with  a  woman  of 
notorious  and  profligate  character  became  public,  he 
was  obliged  to  resign  his  care  of  souls.  In  1522  he 
had  the  audacity  to  write  to  his  bishop  to  demand  a 
general  permission  for  priests  to  marry.  In  this 
letter  he  candidly  acknowledged  his  many  and  griev- 
ous lapses.  "Your  Lordship,"  he  writes,  "knows 
very  well  how  disgraceful  my  conduct  heretofore  has 
been  and  how  my  crimes  have  been  the  ruin  and 
scandal  of  many."  The  bishop,  of  course,  was  power- 
less in  the  matter,  but  Zwingle,  nothing  daunted,  dis- 
pensed himself  and  took  to  himself  a  widow,  one 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      277 

Anna  Reinhard,  with  whom  he  had  lived  for  many 
years,  without  leave  of  either  Church  or  State.  A 
character  of  this  sort  was  prepared  to  lend  himself 
to  the  propagation  of  any  protective  doctrine  no  matter 
how  immoral.  Following  the  lines  of  his  leader  he 
wrote  a  brutal  book,  ''On  Prozidence,'*  in  which  he 
repeats  at  every  page  that  "God  leads  and  forces  man 
into  evil ;  that  he  makes  use  of  the  creature  to  produce 
injustice,  and  that  yet  he  does  not  sin;  for  the  law 
which  makes  an  act  sinful  does  not  exist  for  God, 
and,  moreover.  He  always  acts  from  right  and 
supremely  holy  intentions.  The  creature,  on  the  con- 
trary, although  acting  involuntarily  under  the  Divine 
guidance,  sins,  because  he  violates  the  law  and  acts 
from  damnable  motives."  Without  a  blush  this 
"Reformer"  brutally  declares :  "I  will  indulge  my 
sinful  desires  and,  whatever  I  shall  do,  God  is  the 
author  of  it.  It  is  by  the  ordination  of  God  that 
this  man  is  a  parricide  and  that  man  is  an  adulterer." 
Such  was  the  teachinof  and  practice  of  the  man  whom 
his  friends  call  the  "Eagle  of  Helvetia"  and  praise  as 
"full  of  noblest  chivalry." 

Another  of  the  wretched  number  who  lent  assist- 
ance to  spread  the  harrowing  teaching  on  the  loss  of 
free-will  in  man,  was  John  Calvin,  who  was  born  at 
Nayon,  France,  in  1509,  three  years  after  Zwingle's 
ordination.  He,  too,  studied  for  the  Church,  but  was 
obliged  to  leave  the  seminary  early  on  account  of  his 
immoral  and  revolutionary  proclivities.  After  advo- 
cating Luther's  teachings  at  the  Sorbonne,  Paris,  he 
departed  in  1534  for  Basle,  where  he  wrote  his 
"Institutes  of  the  Christian  Religion."  Later  on  he 
betook  himself  to  Geneva  where  he  gathered  disciples 
and  set  up  his  special  brand  of  worship  in  1538.  Over- 
bearing, cruel  and  despotic  in  character,  he  meted 
out  the  direst  vengeance  to  all  who  dared  to  con- 
trovert or  assail  his  false  preachments.  His  barbarous 
treatment  of  Balsec,  Ameaux,  Gruet,  Gentilis,-  and 
Servetus.  the  latter  of  whom  he  seized  and  burned 
at  the  stake,  himself  an  eye-witness  to  the  holocaust. 


278  ■  The  Facts  About  Luther 

is  a  well-known  fact  of  history.  Such  was  the  man 
who  himself  was  branded  with  the  infamous  mark 
of  the  galleys  for  having  committed  a  crime  of  so 
shameful  a  character  that  it  cannot  be  named  here. 
This  vindictive  and  licentious  ally  of  Luther  evolved 
from  the  teachings  of  his  master  the  gruesome  system 
of  an  absolute  predestination  by  which  God  from  all 
eternity  has  irrevocably  destined  some  to  goodness  and 
eternal  happiness,  and  others  to  evil  and  eternal  misery. 
He  taught  that  "free-will  no  longer  had  an  existence" 
and  that  "God  was  the  author  of  man's  sins."  "For 
reasons,"  he  says,  "incomprehensible  to  our  ignorance, 
God  irresistibly  impels  man  to  violate  His  laws,  that 
His  inspirations  turn  to  evil  the  heart  of  the  wicked, 
and  that  man  falls,  because  God  has  thus  ordered  it." 
These  are  beautiful  assertions  to  fall  from  the  lips  of 
one  who  claime  1  to  be  a  reformer.  Satan  himself 
could  harcHy  formulate  a  dogma  more  designed  to 
insult  God  and  deceive  the  souls  of  men.  No  wonder 
that  the  Protestant  minister,  Mr.  Pouzait,  writing  of 
Calvin's  theological  system,  declared  it  to  be  "the  most 
horrible  ever  conceived  by  any  human  being."  His 
death  was  as  sad  as  his  life  was  indecent. 

The  last  one  we  shall  refer  to  here  who  espoused 
Luther's  views  on  free-will  was  the  mellifluous 
Theodore  of  Beza.  When  Calvin  died  in  1564,  in  the 
fifty-sixth  year  of  his  age,  after  a  life  of  tyranny 
over  both  the  bodies  and  souls  of  men,  Beza,  who 
was  his  disciple  and  who  wrote  his  history,  succeeded 
to  the  leadership  of  the  gloomy  religionism  which 
his  master  introduced  into  Geneva  as  a  substitute  for 
the  Catholic  religion.  Of  this  man,  Hesshuss  writes: 
"Who  will  not  be  astonished  at  the  incredible  impu- 
dence of  this  monster,  whose  scandalous  life  is  known 
throughout  France?"  This  estimate  sums  up  all  we 
care  to  know  about  him.  His  teaching,  like  his  life, 
is  horrible  and  disgusting.  Wishing  to  explain  abso- 
lute predestination,  which  Calvin  had  taught  as  an 
incontrovertible  but  profoundly  mysterious  dogma, 
he  boldly  "affirms  that  God  has  created  the  largest 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      279 

portion  of  men  only  with  the  object  of  making  use 
of  them  to  do  evil ;  and  then  gives  as  a  reason  for  it, 
that  God,  in  the  creation  of  the  universe,  designed  to 
manifest  His  justice  and  His  mercy;  but  how  could 
this  end  he  attained  with  creatures  who,  remaininj^ 
innocent,  would  need  no  pardon,  nor  merit  any  punish- 
ment ;  God  then  ordains  that  they  should  sin ;  He  saves 
some  and  here  His  compassion  is  seen ;  He  condemns 
others,  and  behold  His  justice.  The  end  that  God 
proposes  to  Himself  is  evidently  just  and  holy ;  conse- 
quently the  means  must  be  the  same."  Thus  the 
disciple  goes  farther  in  blasphemy  than  the  master, 
but,  like  all  others  in  rebellion  in  his  day,  Beza  makes 
the  action  of  justification  and  spiritual  regeneration  a 
mere  mechanical  movement  of  man  under  the  irre- 
sistible influence  of  God.  In  his  system,  as  in  that 
of  all  the  other  reformers,  there  is  no  room,  as  in  Cath- 
olic doctrine  for  casting  ofT  the  degradation  of  sin, 
freeing  one's  self  from  the  tyranny  of  passion  and  the 
corrupt  love  of  creatures,  and  following  in  the  foot- 
steps of  Jesus  Christ  and  in  the  way  of  His  Command- 
ments. 

In  presenting  to  our  readers  a  condensed  and  neces- 
sarily imperfect  summary  of  facts  regarding  the 
teaching  and  standing  of  the  chief  lights  of  the 
Reformation,  we  would  not  be  understood  as  wishing 
to  reflect  upon  the  character  or  conduct  of  the  present 
professors  of  Lutheran  and  Calvinistic  doctrines,  many 
of  whom  are  men  estimable  for  their  civic  virtues. 
It  is  not  our  fault  that  the  truth  of  history  will  not 
warrant  a  better  showing  for  those  who  played  a  public 
and  conspicuous  part  in  the  great  religio-political 
drama  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Their  life  and  acts 
and  teachings  are  all  matters  of  public  and  official 
record,  open  to  closest  scrutiny  and  investigation.  The 
facts  cannot  be  concealed  and  all  who  know  these 
must  honestly  confess  that  the  work  of  the  leaders 
of  the  Reformation  was  one  of  sorrowful  darkness, 
despair  and  disintegration.  One  and  all  were  enemies 
of  the  Church  God  established  for  all  men  and  for 


280  The  Facts  About  Luther 

all  time.  They  labored  under  the  hallucination  that 
they  were  serving  God  by  impressing  their  individual 
character  and  system  of  salvation  upon  their  deluded 
and  unthinking  followers,  but,  in  reality,  they  were 
ministers  of  Satan,  as  their  abuse  of  God's  Church 
and  their  scandalous  treatment  and  perversion  of  His 
Revelation  to  mankind  abundantly  show.  The  prin- 
ciples they  fathered  sapped  the  very  foundations  of 
the  true  worship  of  God  and  destroyed  all  moral  sense 
in  man.  The  evil  effects  of  their  destructive  propa- 
ganda were  noticeable  everywhere  in  their  own  day 
and  passed  down  to  successive  ages  bringing  in 
their  train  an  immoralit}^  a  lewdness  and  a  licen- 
tiousness that  have  hardly  been  equalled  in  the  worst 
days  of  paganism.  The  teaching  of  these  lawless  ones 
is  rampant  even  to-day.  It  is  substantially  that  which 
is  now  put  forth  by  our  modern  materialists,  who 
brazenly  contend  that  the  human  v^^ill  is  devoid  of 
self-direction  and  self-determining  power,  as  is  a 
feather  subject  to  the  action  of  different  currents  of 
air.  Thus  the  evil  done  by  the  so-called  Reformers 
in  their  day  and  generation  lives  after  them  to  discredit 
their  mission  and  their  authority  and  to  warn  all  to 
beware  of  their  false  teaching  and  their  pernicious 
example. 

It  is  pitiful  to  know  that  in  this  enlightened  age 
there  are  numbers  in  our  midst  who  still  claim  Luther 
as  the  friend  of  hberty  and  a  defender  of  the  rights 
of  reason.  These  men  are  unwilling  to  read  his 
works,  which,  as  every  scholar  recognizes,  present  a 
dismal  and  low  estimate  of  human  nature  and  do 
not,  therefore,  entitle  him  to  be  considered  in  any 
legitimate  sense  as  an  apostle  of  humanity,  of  human 
liberty,  of  human  dignity  or  inherent  worth.  Re- 
ligious bigotry,  which  controls  and  dominates  all 
their  natural  impulses  of  decency  and  honor,  pre- 
vents them  from  seeing  the  insult  Luther's  teaching 
presents  to  human  freedom  and  its  disastrous  effects 
upon  true  reli.eion  and  real  Christian  morality.  In 
the  words  of  the  Holy  Spirit  of  Truth  we  cry  out: 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       2S1 

"O  ye  sons  of  men  how  long  will  ye  be  dull  of  heart? 
Why  do  you  love  vanity  and  seek  after  lying?"  If 
you  love  truth  and  sincerely  desire  enlightenment 
open  up  the  pages  of  Luther's  work  on  "Slave  Will" 
and  discover  for  yourselves  at  first  hand  that  he  spoke 
very  little  of  liberty,  and  that  he  had  no  conception 
of  it  other  than  as  what  we  call  "license,"  the  license  to 
resist  and  to  rebel  against  all  legitimate  authority, 
Ecclesiastical  and  Civil.  In  that  work  you  will  find 
that  he  maintained  with  all  his  force  that  man  is  a 
hopelessly  corrupt  being,  as  devoid  of  all  spiritual 
freedom  as  a  mere  animal,  utterly  incapable  of 
doing  good,  the  sport  of  either  a  devil  that  mocks 
him  or  of  a  God  that  damns  without  mercy.  Is  not 
such  a  teaching  calculated  to  make  the  blood  run 
cold  in  the  veins  of  men  attuned  to  the  truth  as 
it  is  in  Christ  and  His  Church?  Examine  the  book 
carefully  and  see  for  yourselves  how  the  principle 
he  lays  down  as  gospel  truth  not  only  attacks,  but 
destroys  a  possession  and  an  attribute  of  man  which 
has  ever  been  held  sacred  and  which  is  dear  to  the 
human  heart,  namely,  human  Hberty.  When  you 
become  acquainted  with  his  horrible  teaching,  you 
will  not  wonder  that  to  him  the  word  "Hberty,"  which 
excites  a  thrill  and  stirs  the  deepest  feelings  of  the 
soul,  had  little  or  no  significance. 

The  truth  is  that  Luther  rarely  spoke  or  wrote  of  lib- 
erty in  the  sense  in  which  we  know  and  realize  the 
God-given  boon.  It  is  a  well-known  fact  of  history 
that  he  did  not  favor  that  freedom  of  thought  which 
later  became  the  vogue  among  his  progeny.  Liberty, 
as  he  understood  the  word,  was  solely  for  himself, 
but  not  for  others.  With  him  it  was  a  personal  matter. 
All  men  were  free  to  diflfer  with  the  Pope,  to  reject 
his  teaching,  to  curse  him  to  the  lowest  depths,  were 
even  invited  and  encouraged  to  slay  him  like  a  wolf 
or  robber,  and  wash  their  hands  in  his  blood  and 
that  of  his  cardinals  and  other  adherents,  but  they 
must  not  dare  to  diflrer  from  Martin  Luther.  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  a  non-Catholic  writer,  says :    "The 


282  The  Facts  About  Luther 

great  reformer  had  an  assurance  of  his  personal 
inspiration  of  which  he  was,  indeed,  no  less  confident 
than  of  his  ability  to  perform  miracles.  He  disclaimed 
the  Pope,  he  spurned  the  Church,  but  varying  in  all 
else,  he  never  doubted  of  his  own  infallibility."  His 
autocracy,  as  is  well  known,  allowed  no  discussion 
and  his  intolerance  knew  no  limits.  The  tyranny  that 
dominated  his  propaganda  was  the  natural  result  of 
his  false  and  un-heard  of  theories.  Theory,  as  every 
one  knows,  is  the  cause  of  practice  and,  therefore, 
it  is  evident  that  from  a  corrupt  theory,  corrupt  con- 
duct will  flow.  Luther  advanced  the  false  theory  that 
man  did  not  possess  free-will,  and  by  consequence 
was  deprived  of  personal  liberty,  and  thus  holding 
tenaciously  to  his  false  theory  he  could  not  save  him- 
self from  its  corruption,  and,  naturally,  he  became  not 
the  advocate,  but  the  enemy  of  all  liberty,  civil  and 
religious. 

Non-Catholics,  as  a  rule,  are  not  familiar  with  the 
degrading  teachings  which  Luther  expounded  in  his 
infamous  work  on  ''Slave  Will."  They  have  never 
been  given  an  opportunity  to  study  this  volume  at 
first  hand  and  find  out  for  themselves  the  destructive 
principles  therein  advocated.  Their  ignorance  of  the 
facts  has  been  taken  advantage  of  and  they  have 
been  made  to  believe  that  their  leader,  who  declared 
man's  will  to  be  a  "slave  will,"  was  the  real  and 
only  one  who  promoted  liberty  in  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury by  breaking  the  fetters  of  religious  bondage  and 
securing  for  all  perfect  freedom  of  conscience  and 
thought.  This  view  has  been  repeated  so  often  by 
the  maligners  of  truth  that  they  have  come  to  imagine 
that  as  soon  as  the  people  of  Europe  got  the  Bible, 
Luther's  Bible,  mistranslated,  changed,  and  altered, 
they  abandoned  the  Mother  Church,  rushed  into  the 
new  man-made  form  of  religion  of  their  own  accord 
and  at  once  established  civil  and  religious  liberty  for 
everybody.  The  story  is  fascinating.  It  tells  against 
Rome  and,  therefore,  thousands  upon  thousands  have 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      283 

been  deceived  into  giving  it  credence.     What,  how- 
ever, is  the  hard,  cold,  plain  truth  in  the  case? 

History,  when  truly  and  fully  written,  proves  that 
all  the  notions  entertained  by  our  separated  brethren 
on  this  matter  are  but  the  lying  artifices  of  the  mis- 
chievous, intended  to  deceive,  and  that  whenever  and 
wherever  Luther's  abominable  principles  and  his 
Protestantism  triumphed,  they  succeeded  by  violence, 
torture,  persecution  and  the  power  of  wicked  princes 
against  the  struggles,  the  protestations  and  the  mani- 
fest will  of  the  people.  Everywhere  that  they  attained 
control  of  the  government,  which  they  invariably 
sought,  they  overthrew  religious  liberty  and  imperiously 
imposed  their  new-fangled  beliefs  on  the  country  and 
on  the  people  thereof.  This  may  seem  a  very  strong 
statement,  but  the  facts  of  history  confirm  it  most 
abundantly.  In  advancing  this  sta::ement,  we  do  not 
seek  to  appeal  to  prejudice  or  stir  up  hatred.  We  aim 
to  tell  the  truth,  the  whole  truth  and  nothing  but  the 
truth,  to  enlighten  those  who  love  justice  and  to  defend 
our  forefathers  in  the  faith  who  were  always  and  in  all 
places  the  real  upholders  of  the  liberties  of  the  people 
and  without  whose  struggles  and  sacrifices  we  would 
not  now  be  in  the  enjoyment  of  these  inestimable 
blessings. 

According  to  the  time-honored  teaching  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church,  religious  liberty  guarantees  to  every  man 
the  right  to  worship  God  according  to  the  dictates 
of  his  conscience  without  thereby  incurring  any  civil 
penalties  or  disabilities  whatever.  The  Catholic 
Church  has  not  only  proclaimed  this  doctrine  from 
the  very  beginning  of  her  existence  but  she  has, 
moreover,  faithfully  adhered  to  it  in  practice  all 
through  the  course  of  her  marvelous  existence.  No 
one  who  is  familiar  with  her  career  can  gainsay 
this  statement.  'Tt  is  an  axiom,"  wrote  the  late  Arch- 
bishop Kenrick  of  Baltimore,  "that  the  worship  of 
God  must  be  voluntary  in  order  to  be  acceptable. 
Liberty  of  conscience  was  claimed  by  Tertullian  for 
the  Christians,  as  a  right  grounded  on  the  very  nature 


384  The  Facts  About  Luther 

of  religion.  'It  is,'  said  he,  'a  right  and  a  natural 
privilege,  that  each  one  should  worship  as  he  thinks 
proper;  nor  can  the  religion  of  another  injure  or 
profit  him.'  Neither  is  it  a  part  of  religion  to  compel 
its  adoption,  since  this  should  be  spontaneous,  not 
forced,  as  even  sacrifices  are  asked  only  of  the  cheer- 
ful giver.  The  duty  of  worshiping  God  conformably 
to  His  revealed  will  being  manifest,  every  interfer- 
ence with  its  discharge  is  a  violation  of  the  natural 
rights  which  man  possesses  to  fulfill  so  solemn  an 
obligation.  The  use  of  force  to  compel  compliance 
with  this  duty,  is  likely  to  result  in  mere  external 
conformity,  which,  without  the  homage  of  the  heart, 
is  of  no  value  whatever."  This  is  the  uniform  teaching 
of  the  Catholic  Church.  *Tf  at  any  time,"  as  Cardinal 
Gibbons  states,  ''encroachments  on  these  sacred  rights 
of  man  were  perpetrated  by  professing  members  of 
the  Catholic  faith,  these  wrongs,  far  from  being  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Church,  were  committed  in  palpable 
violation  of  her  authority." 

Luther  was  by  no  means  ignorant  of  this  teaching 
and  practice  of  the  ancient  Church,  which  he  singled 
out  for  abuse  and  misrepresentation.  During  his 
preparation  for  the  priesthood  and  after  his  ordina-  * 
tion,  he  familiarized  himself  with  all  that  was  to  be 
known  on  the  important  topic.  He  knew  as  well  as 
any  priest  or  layman  of  his  day  that,  whilst  Christ, 
His  Apostles  and  their  legitimate  successors  in  the 
Divine  mission  of  teaching  and  preaching  the  truths 
of  revelation,  enjoined  obedience  on  all,  under  the 
penalty  of  being  ranked  with  heathens  and  publicans, 
they,  however,  did  not  intend  and  never  meant  to 
stifle  or  to  crush  all  rational  liberty  and  all  rational 
investigation.  He  knew  that  their  insistence  on  the 
acceptance  of  the  eternal  verities  had  for  purpose  the 
cultivation  of  the  truest  and  highest  independence  of 
conscience  and  of  thought  by  perfect  submission  to 
God's  teaching,  thus  saving  men  from  being  "tossed 
about  by  every  wind  of  doctrine,"  and  that  personal 
freedom  of  thought  and  fallible  judgment  in  religious 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      285 

matters  leads  inevitably  to  the  destruction  of  "the 
faith  once  delivered  to  the  saints."  The  "Truth,"  as 
St.  John  says,  "shall  set  you  free."  Luther  knew 
and,  in  his  earlier  days,  taught  and  insisted  that  in 
obeying  the  Church  and  her  authorized  ambassadors, 
men  obeyed  Him  who  founded  and  commanded  her 
to  teach  all  things  whatsoever  He  had  directed.  He 
knew,  too,  that  whilst  in  the  clear,  plain,  explicit 
teaching  of  revelation  obedience  was  strictly  enjoined 
to  preserve  truth  in  all  its  original  purity,  in  other 
matters  that  were  not  essential,  a  reasonable  latitude 
was  always  wisely  allowed.  He  knew  all  this,  but 
gradually  becoming  restless  under  the  restraint  of 
Divine  limitations,  which  he  construed  as  servility  of 
intellect,  and  nursing  the  unwholesome  thought  that 
men  were  absolutely  free  to  decide  by  their  private 
judgment  whether  they  would  receive  or  reject  the 
eternal  verities,  he,  conveniently,  in  his  state  of  antago- 
nism to  Divine  authority,  forget  his  earlier  beliefs, 
and  grew  pugnacious,  rebellious  and  seditious.  No 
longer  willing  to  recognize  and  submit  to  the  conserv- 
ative principle  of  Church  authority,  which  up  to  his 
day  held  the  religious  world  in  the  unity  for  which 
Christ  prayed  and  willed,  this  proud  man  forthwith 
determined  to  oppose,  persecute  and  malign  the  insti- 
tution which  Christ  enjoined  all  to  obey  and  respect 
and  to  which  during  fifteen  hundred  years  millions 
upon  millions  of  the  brightest,  ablest  and  the  most  in- 
telligent minds  had  given  glad  and  willing  loyalty  and 
submission. 

As  had  been  the  case  with  all  other  heresiarchs  who 
preceded  him,  Luther  used  the  weapons  of  which 
hell  availed  itself  to  inaugurate  "sects"  and  "dissen- 
sions," in  order  to  burst  asunder  the  time  honored 
bond  of  Christian  unity.  An  adept  in  lying,  which 
every  student  knows  he  approved  by  his  teaching  and 
example,  he  went  forth  in  bold  effrontery  to  make 
his  hearers  believe  that  the  Church  had  bound  its 
members  hand  and  foot,  body  and  soul,  and  that  they 
were  not  allowed  even  to  reflect  or  think  for  them- 


286  The  Facts  About  Luther 

selves.  The  time  had  come,  he  thought,  to  strike 
and  free  mankind  from  what  he  called  the  degrading 
yoke  of  the  Papacy  and  to  restore  to  them  their 
"Christian  liberty."  He  told  them  that  those  who 
professed  the  old  religion  were  groaning  under  a  worse 
than  Babylonian  captivity  and  that  all  who  would  rally 
under  his  banner  of  reform  would  be  brought  back 
from  exile  into  the  beautiful  land  of  Israel,  there  to 
worship  in  freedom  and  in  peace  near  the  Sion  of  God. 
In  the  desire  to  accomplish  his  wicked  project  he 
never  thought  how  like  he  was  to  Antichrist,  the 
one  who  sets  up  a  false  Christ  or  a  false  Christianity 
or  draws  away  many  from  the  true.  No.  He  thought 
that  the  Pope,  whom  Jesus  Christ  made  the  head  of  His 
society,  was  Antichrist;  that  the  Church  was  ruthlessly 
trampled  under  foot  by  his  followers  and  especially  by 
his  ministers;  that  the  liberties  of  the  world  were  en- 
tirely crushed  in  Catholicism.  The  Church,  her  ruler, 
her  teachings,  were  all,  according  to  him,  corrupted; 
and  this  instigator  of  revolt,  who  himself  spumed 
authority  and  declared  the  Decalogue  had  little  or  no 
binding  force  on  Christians,  exhorted  all  to  arise  in 
their  strength  to  break  their  chains  and  to  sever  their 
connection  with  Rome  forever.  The  saving  and  re- 
straining influence  of  Church  authority  was  to  be 
spurned  as  wholly  incompatible  with  freedom  and  each 
one  henceforth  was  encouraged  to  invest  himself  with 
sovereign  power  and  unrestricted  liberty  in  dealing 
with  all  matters  of  religion.  Thus,  under  the  enticing 
name  of  freedom,  men  were  promised  that  they  would 
realize  the  brightest  visions  of  liberty  and  the  blessing 
of  true  and  independent  manhood. 

But  the  credentials  for  all  this?  Did  the  new  doc- 
trine of  private  judgment,  which  was  to  bring  about 
"the  emancipation  of  the  human  mind,"  result  in  the 
blessings  it  announced  with  such  a  flourish  of  trum- 
pets? Did  the  insurrection  against  the  power  estab- 
lished by  God  in  the  spiritual  order,  wherein  existed, 
in  principle  and  practice,  true  independence  of  con- 
science and  thought,  compensate  for  the  profound  and 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      287 

degrading  subjection  of  the  intellect  and  the  adoption 
of  the  thoughts  and  words  of  the  impudent  and  low 
buffoon,  who  dogmaiized  in  taverns  amid  the  fumes 
of  beer  and  outraged  in  his  fury  that  same  liberty 
he  pretended  to  secure  for  his  companions  in  rebel- 
lion? Is  it  not  true,  as  all  ages  attest,  that  whoever 
throws  off  the  yoke  of  legitimate  authority  will  be 
punished  with  slavery ;  and  the  more  legitimate  the 
authority,  that  is,  marked  with  the  Divine  seal,  the 
more  complete  and  degrading  the  servitude?  Men 
who  refuse  to  obey  God  and  those  whom  He  author- 
izes to  rule  in  His  name,  are  invariably  led,  as  the 
blind,  by  fools  or  bound  by  executioners.  Mark  how 
all  this  was  literally  realized  in  the  case  of  the  Re- 
former and  his  followers  in  rebellion  against  the  Church 
of  God. 

Luther  stood  before  the  world  in  the  attitude  of  a 
liberator,  but  when  we  draw  near,  we  discover  his 
doctrine  is  license  and  his  behavior  its  exemplifica- 
tion. We  were  prepared  to  think,  when  he  freed 
himself  and  his  blind  foUovsrers  from  the  duty  of  obedi- 
ence to  Rome  and  presented  his  "new  gospel/* 
proclaiming  the  principle  of  private  judgment  as  the 
broad  basis  of  his  system  of  Christian  liberty,  that 
it  would  at  least  have  guaranteed  its  followers  real 
freedom  of  thought  and  of  judgment  in  all  matters 
of  belief.  Surely  we  might  expect  that  after  having 
indignantly  rejected  the  wise  and  wholesome  principle 
of  Church  authority  as  incompatible  with  liberty,  he 
would  not  attempt  to  enthrone  again  this  self-same 
principle  in  his  new  system  of  belief,  much  less  to 
impose  it  as  an  obligation  on  those  whom  he  cajoled 
and  seduced  to  leave  the  Church  of  their  fathers  to 
embrace  one  of  his  own  making. 

Yet  this  course,  absurd  and  inconsistent  as  it  mani- 
festly proved,  was  the  very  one  he  adopted  and  the 
one  adopted,  as  Spalding  says,  "without  one  excep- 
tion, by  the  numerous  sects  to  which  the  Reformation 
gave  birth.  If  there  be  any  truth  in  history,  the 
reformers  v/ere  themselves  the  most  intolerant  of  men, 


2S8  The  Facts  About  Luther 

not  only  towards  the  Catholic  Church,  but  towards 
each  other.  They  could  not  brook  dissent  from  the 
crude  notions  on  religion  which  they  had  broached. 
Men  might  protest  against  the  decisions  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church;  but  woe  to  them,  if,  following  out  their 
own  private  judgment,  they  dared  protest  against  the 
self-constituted  authority  of  the  new-fangled  sects." 

The  tyrannical  and  intolerant  character  of  Luther, 
the  father  of  the  Reformation,  is  a  fact  admitted  by 
all  candid  Protestant  writers.  Roscoe,  for  instance  in 
his  "Life  and  Pontificate  of  Leo  X,"  justly  censures 
"the  severity  with  which  Luther  treated  all  those, 
who  unfortunately  happened  to  believe  too  much  on 
the  one  hand,  or  too  little  on  the  other,  and  could 
not  walk  steadily  on  the  hair-breadth  line  which  he 
had  presented."  This  distinguished  writer,  whose  pen 
has  so  glowingly  depicted  the  bright  literary  age  of 
Leo  X.,  makes  the  following  appropriate  remarks  on 
this  glaring  inconsistency:  "Whilst  Luther  was 
engaged  in  his  opposition  to  the  Church  of  Rome,  he 
asserted  the  right  of  private  judgment  with  the  confi- 
dence and  courage  of  a  martyr.  But  no  sooner  had 
he  freed  his  followers  from  the  chains  of  Papal  domi- 
nation, than  he  forged  others  in  many  respects  equally 
intolerable;  and  it  was  the  employment  of  his  latter 
years  to  counteract  the  beneficial  effects  produced  by 
his  former  years." 

For  a  time  Luther  v/as  almost  omnipotent  and  exer- 
cised his  self-constituted  power  to  persecute  with 
relentless  fury.  No  sooner,  however,  did  his  followers 
in  revolt  recover  from  the  first  enchantment  of  his 
personal  influence  and  the  intoxication  of  their  insur- 
rection against  the  Holy  See,  than  they  began  to 
quarrel  with  their  leader  and  with  each  other,  just, 
we  suppose,  to  give  an  object  lesson  in  dissension  and 
illustrate  practically  their  widely  heralded  and  incon- 
sistent system  of  liberty.  Their  controversies,  bick- 
erings and  wranglines,  all  the  result  of  their  glorious 
new  go: pel  of  so-called  Christian  liberty,  are  matters 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       289 

of  historical  record  and  put  down  to  the  shame  of 
Protestantism. 

Luther  set   himself   up   against   all   law,   restraint, 
and   ordinance,   and   his  disciples   soon   followed  his 
example.     As  he  attacked  the  most  essential  truths 
of  Christianity,  we  must  not  wonder  that  his  followers, 
trained  in  the  principles  of  private  interpretation,  used 
their  right  to  construe  the  verities  of  religion  as  their 
individual  judgment  dictated.    The  path  to  unity,  which 
freedom  of  thought  and  of  judgment  in  matters  of 
religion  was  supposed  to  establish,  was  soon  trodden 
down  and  rendered  desolate  by  the  divergent  views 
of  its  misguided  followers.    In  the  work  of  construc- 
tion its  builders  maliciously  destroyed  and  recklessly 
frittered  away  the  eternal  verities,  so  much  so,  that 
scarcely  one  saving  truth  of  revelation  remained  as 
a   basis   of   their  behef.     One   and   all   rejected   the 
Church,  "the  pillar  and  the  ground  of  the  truth" ;  one 
and  all  spurned  the  authority  of  the  Church's  legiti- 
mate head;  one  made  God  the  author  of  sin;  another 
made  the  Almighty  unalterably  determine  the  ultimate 
fate  of  each  man  beforehand  from  all  eternity ;  "one," 
to  use  the  words  of  Luther  in  his  letter  to  the  Chris- 
tians   of   Antwerp,    ''rejected   baptism ;    another   the 
Eucharist;   another   strikes   out   revelation    from   his 
creed ;  one  says  this,  the  other  that ;  there  are  as  many 
sects  as  heads ;  everybody  wishes  to  be  a  prophet." 
When  the   Founder  of   Protestantism   saw   his   path 
of  unity  winding  in  so  many  directions  and  his  self- 
assumed   infallibility   ignored,   he  grew    disconsolate, 
threatening    and    abusive.      On    page    292    of    the 
"Tischreden,"  we  find  what  this  man,  who  was  sup- 
posed to  have  freed  his  followers  from  the  chains  of 
papal  domination,  thought  of  his  false  brothers  and 
fellow  heretics  who  would  no  longer  suffer  his  domi- 
nation and  intolerance.     "If,"  he  says,  "  they  would 
not  listen  to  him,  so  much  the  worse  for  them ;  in 
the  end,  they  would  be  seen  with  the  worthies,  whom 
they  resembled,  all  burning  in  Hell  together."  Surely 


290  The  Facts  About  Luther 

no  Pope  of  Rome  was  ever  so  uncharitable  as  to  voice 
such  wholesale  condemnation. 

But  the  tyranny  and  intolerance  of  Luther  did  not 
stop  in  mere  denunciation  of  tliosc  who  dared  to  exer- 
cise the  liberty  of  differing  from  him  in  his  opinions. 
All  who  ventured  to  question  his  infallibility  in 
religious  matters  were  made  to  feel  the  heavy  weight 
of  his  habitual  and  never-ceasing  intolerant  vengeance. 
From  the  number  of  the  many  victims  of  his  brutal 
conduct,  we  will  recall  a  few  glaring  examples.  One 
of  the  victims  of  Luther's  violence  was  his  most 
favored  disciple  Melanchthon,  a  learned  but  weak, 
timid,  obsequious  character.  "This  man  was  incapable 
of  bearing  any  contradiction,"  says  his  friend  Baum- 
gartner.  ''He  veered  with  every  wind  and  whilst 
timidly  a  disciple  of  the  Reformer,  he  was  secretly 
a  Calvinist."  In  a  letter  Melanchthon  wrote  to  his 
friend  Camerarius,  he  tells  of  Luther's  brutal  conduct 
towards  him.  "I  am,"  he  says,  "in  a  state  of  servi- 
tude, as  if  I  was  in  the  cave  of  Cyclops  and  often 
do  I  think  of  making  my  escape."  Deploring  Luther's 
outbursts  of  temper  he  says,  'T  tremble  when  I  think 
of  the  passions  of  my  master;  they  yield  not  in  vio- 
lence to  the  passions  of  Hercules."  He  testifies,  more- 
over, that  Luther  occasionally  inflicted  on  him  personal 
chastisement.  According  to  Goschler,  this  disciple 
"gave  himself  up  to  all  manner  of  oaths  and  contu- 
melious speeches  which  dismayed  every  one."  He 
lacked,  however,  the  courage  to  break  the  chains  of 
f^ervitude  with  which  his  cruel  master  had  bound  him 
hand  and  foot.  Happy,  indeed,  he  would  have  been 
had  he  followed  the  example  of  Staupitz,  Ulenberg 
and  others  among  Luther's  quondam  friends,  who 
were  wise  in  time  and  returned  to  Catholic  unity,  the 
"City  that  could  not  be  hid"  containing  "the  light 
of  the  world"  to  which  the  heresiarch  had  shut  his 
eyes. 

Andrew  Bodenstein,  more  generally  known  by  the 
name  of  Carlstadt,  was  another  victim  of  Luther's 
intolerance.     According  to  Audin,  this  man's   voca- 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       291 

tion  was  to  "blacken  paper;  to  throw  ink  on  the  head 
of  Luther  or  his  disciples,  his  delight  and  amusement." 
In  his  study  of  the  Bible,  using  his  right  of  private 
judgment,  he  reached  totally  different  conclusions 
from  Luther  as  to  the  lawfulness  of  images,  the  real 
presence,  infant  baptism  and  other  questions.  Having 
the  courage  of  his  convictions,  he  began  to  disseminate 
his  special  discoveries  and  tried  to  win  proselytes  to 
his  views  arid  opinions.  This  proceeding  angered 
Luther,  who  could  brook  no  opposition.  ''You  are  my 
enemy,  my  adversary,"  said  Luther  to  Carlstadt.  "It 
is  true,"  retorted  the  other:  "I  am  the  adversary  and 
enemy  of  every  one  who  will  oppose  God  and  fight 
against  Christ  and  the  truth."  "May  I  see  you  broken 
on  a  wheel,"  said  Luther  on  taking  leave  of  him. 
"And  may  you,"  retorted  the  latter,  "break  your  neck 
before  you  get  out  of  the  city."  Luther  never  forgot 
this  unpleasant  altercation  with  his  old  professor.  In 
the  bitterness  of  his  heart  he  there  and  then  swore 
vengeance  against  his  antagonist  and  ever  after  left 
nothing  undone  to  have  him  banished  from  Witten- 
berg, the  citadel  of  the  Reformation.  His  spite 
followed  his  former  disciple  in  his  wanderings  from 
place  to  place.  Reduced  to  the  direst  misery  through 
the  never  ceasing  pursuit  of  Luther,  Carlstadt  wrote  to 
his  friends  Krautwald  and  Schwenkfeld,  two  Lutheran 
theologians,  to  tell  of  his  distress  and  said :  "I  shall 
soon  be  forced  to  sell  all,  in  order  to  support  myself, 
my  clothes,  my  delf,  all  my  furniture.  No  one  takes 
pity  on  me;  and  I  fear  that  both  I  and  my  child  shall 
perish  with  hunger."  Luther  hunted  "his  enemy  and 
adversary,"  as  he  called  Carlstadt,  up  and  down  the 
country  in  the  most  relentless  manner  until  finally  the 
victim  of  his  abiding  vengeance  expired,  a  miserable 
outcast,  at  Basle  in  Switzerland. 

To  these  victims  of  Luther's  intolerance  we  may  add 
Strigel,  who  was  imprisoned  for  three  years  for  main- 
taining that  "man  was  not  a  merely  passive  instrument 
in  the  work  of  his  conversion" ;  Hardenberg,  who  was 
banished  from  Saxony  for  having  been  guilty  of  some 


292  The  Facts  About  Luther 

leaning  towards  the  Calvinistic  doctrines  on  the 
Eucharist,  and  Zwingle  and  the  Sacramentarians, 
whom,  Luther  declared,  "were  heretics  who  had  broken 
away  from  him,"  and  ''ministers  of  Satan,  against 
whom  no  exercise  of  severity,  however  great,  would  be 
excessive." 

Luther  not  only  persecuted  individuals,  but  also 
large  bodies  of  dissenters  who  organized  themselves 
to  resist  his  authority  and  disseminate  doctrines 
opposed  to  his.  Prominent  amongst  the  rebels  from 
the  Lutheran  ranks  were  the  Anabaptists,  who  received 
their  name  from  their  custom  of  baptizing  over  again 
those  who  had  been  already  baptized  in  infancy.  John 
Miinzer,  the  leader  of  the  sect,  and  his  preachers  gave 
themselves  out  for  prophets  in  Thuringia  and  other 
places,  and  ran  like  madmen  through  the  streets  of 
the  cities  and  towns  exhorting  and  summoning  all  to 
be  re-baptized.  In  their  reckless  propaganda  they 
sacked  churches,  destroyed  altars  and  trod  under  foot 
the  images  of  Christ  and  His  saints.  Not  only  men, 
but  even  women  ran  wildly  from  place  to  place  and 
flung  themselves  on  the  ground  cursing  and  praying 
by  turns.  The  rabble  were  invited  to  join  "the 
thousand  years'  reign  of  Christ"  they  imagined  had 
come  when  ''God  would  destroy  all  tyrants  from  off 
the  face  of  the  earth."  They  promised  possession  of 
every  enjoyment  to  all  who  would  join  their  ranks 
and  help  in  downing  all  constituted  authority.  A 
frightful  condition  of  things  ensued.  Polygamy  even 
was  introduced  and  the  most  scandalous  excesses  were 
openly  commited  without  fear  or  shame.  None  of  their 
prophets,  Miinzer,  Mattiezen,  a  baker  of  Haarlem, 
Bockhold,  a  tailor  from  Leyden,  whilst  they  agreed 
in  putting  forward  a  free  inquiry  into  the  meaning 
of  the  Bible  as  the  fundamental  principle  of  their 
teaching,  would  tolerate  any  other  interpretation  than 
his  own. 

Luther  could  not  endure  this  new  sect,  which  his 
teaching  on  private  judgment  brought  into  being. 
He  manifested  his  opposition  toward  it  in  a  synod 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       293 

convened  at  Hamburg  on  the  7th  of  August,  1536, 
composed  of  deputies  sent  by  all  the  cities  which 
had  separated  from  the  Mother  Church.  The  object 
of  the  synod  was  to  devise  means  for  exterminating 
the  adherents  of  Miinzer  and  "his  new  religion.  The 
animus  of  this  synod  is  manifested  in  one  of  its  decrees, 
which  runs  as  follows :  ''Whoever  rejects  infant 
baptism,  whoever  trangresses  the  orders  of  the  magis- 
trates, whoever  preaches  against  taxes,  whoever  teaches 
the  community  of  goods,  whoever  usurps  the  priest- 
hood, whoever  holds  unlawful  assemblies,  whoever 
sins  against  faith,  shall  be  punished  with  death.  .  .  . 
As  for  the  simple  people  who  have  not  preached  or 
administered  baptism,  but  who  were  seduced  to  permit 
themselves  to  frequent  the  assemblies  of  the  heretics, 
if  they  do,  not  wish  to  renounce  Anabaptism,  they 
shall  be  scourged,  punished  with  perpetual  exile  and 
even  with  death,  if  they  return  three  times  to  the 
place  whence  they  have  been  expelled.''  Not  a  single 
protest  was  raised  against  this  cruel  decree.  It 
received  the  unanimous  approbation  of  the  assembled 
delegates.  When  the  bigamist,  Philip  of  Hesse,  was 
apprised  of  the  intolerant  views  of  the  synod,  he 
remonstrated  wtih  Luther,  but  to  no  purpose.  The 
excommunicated  Saxon  monk  sent  the  Landgrave  a 
letter  to  soothe  his  scruples  of  conscience  on  the 
severity  of  the  official  decree  of  the  synod  and  therein 
openly  defended  persecution  on  Scriptural  grounds. 
"Whoever,"  he  wrote,  "denies  the  doctrines  of  our 
faith,  aye,  even  one  article  which  rests  on  the  Scrip- 
ture, or  the  authority  of  the  universal  teaching  of  the 
Church,  must  be  punished  severely.  He  must  be 
treated  not  only  as  a  heretic,  but  also  as  a  blasphemer 
of  the  holy  name  of  God.  It  is  not  necessary  to  lose 
time  in  disputes  with  such  people;  they  are  to  be 
condemned  as  impious  blasphemers."  No  comments 
are  here  needed.  Luther's  doctrine,  as  given  to  this 
synod,  it  is  obvious,  is  entirely  opposed  to  freedom  of 
conscience  and  in  favor  of  religious  persecution. 
Every  student  of  history  knows  that  Luther  treated 


294  The  Facts  About  Luther 

with  an  insufferable  arrogance  and  downright  intoler- 
ance all  who  refused  to  submit  to  his  wild,  erratic 
and  destructive  pronouncements.  He  was  as  intolerant 
towards  the  leaders  and  followers  of  the  new  sects 
that  sprang  up  and  differed  from  him,  as  he  was 
against  the  Mother  Church  and  her  adherents.  "As 
I  am  now,"  he  says,  "near  the  grave,  I  will  bring 
this  testimony  and  this  glory  with  me  before  the 
judgment  seat  of  my  dear  Lord  and  Saviour,  Jesus 
Christ,  that  with  all  my  heart  I  have  condemned  and 
avoided  the  enthusiasts  and  the  enemies  of  the  Sacra- 
ments, Carlstadt,  Zwingle,  Oecolampad,  Stenckfeld, 
and  their  disciples  in  Zurich  and  wherever  they  may 
be."  "I  would,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "far  sooner  be 
cut  into  pieces  or  burnt  a  hundred  times  over,  than 
be  of  one  opinion  or  of  one  mind  with  Stenckfeld, 
Zwingle,  Carlstadt,  Oecolampad,  and  whoever  else 
they  may  be,  the  wicked  enthusiasts,  or  agree  with 
their  teaching."  Of  Zwingle  and  his  colleague, 
Oecolampad,  he  wrote  that  "they  had  a  devilish,  super- 
devilish,  blasphemous  heart  and  lying  lips."  All  this 
and  more  of  the  same  kind  of  reproach  showed  the 
love  the  reformer  entertained  for  those  who  deserted 
his  cause  and  inaugurated  sects  of  their  own  making. 
Zwingle  replied  to  Luther  and  told  him,  "We  do  thee 
no  injustice  when  we  reproach  and  condemn  thee  as 
a  worse  betrayer  and  denier  of  Christ  than  the  ancient 
heretic  Marcion."  Zurich  also  answered  the  leader 
of  revolt  by  the  mouth  of  Campanus :  "It  is  as 
certain  that  Luther  is  a  devil,  as  that  God  is  God." 
But  this  glorious  defender  of  religious  liberty  is 
not  satisfied  merely  with  persecuting  those  who  refused 
to  submit  to  his  authority  and  infallibiHty.  Just  to 
show  how  dear  to  him  was  the  principle  of  liberty 
of  conscience,  he  inaugurated  a  campaign  of  intoler- 
ance against  the  Jews  such  as  was  never  surpassed 
in  severity  or  cruelty  before  or  since.  Not  content 
with  calling  them  by  the  most  opprobrious  names,  "ass- 
heads,"  "lying  mouths,"  "devils'  children,"  "devils," 
"young  devils,  damned  to  hell,"  he  consoles  himself 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       295 

with  the  thought  that  ''they  will  be  torniented,  not 
in  upper  hell  nor  in  middle  hell,  but  in  hell's  deepest 
depths."  He  tells  how  they  ought  to  be  treated  by 
Christian  princes :  how  he  would  treat  them,  if  he 
had  the  power.  "What,"  he  writes,  **are  we  to  do 
with  this  rejected,  damned  people  of  the  Jews?.... 
I  will  give  my  honest  advice." 

"First,  their  synagogues  or  schools  are  to  be  set  on 
fire  and  whatever  will  not  burn,  is  to  be  covered  and 
heaped  over  with  earth,  so  that  never  again  shall  one 
find  stone  or  cinder  of  them  left. 

"Secondly,  their  houses  are  likewise  to  be  broken 
down  and  destroyed,  for  they  do  exactly  the  same  in 
them  as  they  also  do  in  their  schools.  Therefore  they 
may  perhaps  be  allowed  a  roof  or  a  stable  over  them, 
as  the  Gypsies  are,  in  order  that  they  may  know  they 
are  not  the  lords  in  our  country  as  they  boast  to 
be.... 

"Thirdly,  all  their  Prayer  Books  and  Talmuds  are 
to  be  taken  away  from  them,  in  which  such  idolatry, 
lies,  curses  and  blasphemies  are  taught. 

"Fourthly,  their  Rabbis  are  to  be  forbidden  under 
pain  of  capital  punishment  to  teach  any  more.  . . . 

"Fifthly,  the  Jews  are  to  be  entirely  denied  legal 
protection  when  using  the  roads  in  the  country,  for 
they  have  no  business  to  be  in  the  country. . . . 

"Sixthly,  usury  is  to  be  forbidden  them,  and  all  their 
cash  and  their  treasures  of  silver  and  gold  are  to  be 
taken  away  from  them  and  to  be  put  aside  to  be 
preserved.  And  for  this  reason,  all  that  they  have 
(as  was  said  above),  they  have  stolen  and  robbed 
from  us  through  their  usury." 

Further  on  in  his  work  "About  the  Jews  and  their 
Lies,"  edition  1543,  he  addresses  himself  to  the  princes 
in  these  words :  Burn  their  synagogues.  Forbid  them 
all  that  I  have  mentioned  above.  Force  them  to  work 
and  treat  them  with  every  kind  of  severity,  as  Moses 
did  in  the  desert  and  slew  three  thousand.  .  .  .If  that 
is  no  use,  we  must  drive  them  away  like  mad  dogs, 
in    order   that    we    may    not   be    partakers    of    their 


596  The  Facts  About  Luther 

abominable  blasphemy  and  of  all  their  vices,  and  in 
order  that  we  may  not  deserve  the  anger  of  God  and 
be  damned  with  them.  I  have  done  my  duty.  Let 
every  one  see  how  he  does  his.     I  am  excused.'* 

The  implacable  hatred  of  Luther  towards  the  Jews 
stands  out  in  bold  and  unfavorable  contrast  with  the 
consistent,  uniform,  kind  consideration  of  the  Cath- 
olic Church  and  her.  rulers  towards  that  oppressed 
people.  It  is  well  known  how,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
Jews  were  constantly  and  uniformly  protected  by  the 
Popes,  even  in  Rome  itself,  where  they  had,  and  still 
have  at  the  present  time,  a  special  quarter  of  the  city 
allotted  to  them.  Rome  has  always  been  the  asylum 
and  home  of  this  oppressed  people,  as  Voltaire  him- 
self acknowledges,  and  Avignon,  because  it  was  for 
a  long  time  the  residence  of  the  Popes,  shares  with 
the  Eternal  City  this  honorable  distinction. 

The  Jews  themselves  bear  witness  to  this  fact.  In 
the  "great  Jewish  Sanhedrin"  held  in  Paris  in  the  year 
1807,  and  in  the  session  of  the  fifth  of  February  of 
that  year,  the  following  resolutions  were  placed  upon 
record  of  that  Jewish  assembly:  ''At  divers  times  the 
Roman  Popes  have  given  protection  and  refuge  in 
their  territories  to  the  persecuted  Jews  from  all  parts 
of  Europe.  Towards  the  end  of  the  seventh  century 
St.  Gregory  defended  them  in  all  Christian  countries. 
In  the  tenth  century  the  Spanish  Bishops  resisted  the 
ill  treatment  of  the  Jews  by  the  people,  and  Pope 
Alexander  11.  congratulated  them  on  their  courageous 
attitude.  In  the  twelfth  century  St.  Bernard  defended 
them,  and  Innocent  II.  and  Alexander  III.  protected 
them.  In  the  thirteenth  century  Gregory  IX.  averted 
a  threatening  disaster  against  them  in  England,  as 
well  as  in  France  and  Spain,  as  this  Pope  commanded, 
imder  the  penalty  of  excommunication,  that  no  one 
do  violence  to  their  conscience  or  interfere  with  their 
holy  days.  Clement  V.  facilitated  for  them  the  means 
of  education.  Clement  VI.  gave  them  an  asylum  in 
Avignon,  when  they  were  persecuted  in  the  whole  of 
Europe.     It  would  be  easy  to  enumerate  many  other 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       297 

kind  promulgations  in  favor  of  the  Jews.  The  people 
of  Israel,  ever  unhappy  and  almost  ever  persecuted, 
never  had  the  opportunity  nor  the  means  to  acknowl- 
edge their  gratefulness  for  the  many  benefits  received. 
Since  1800  years,  this  is  the  first  opportunity  aflforded 
to  express  the  feelings  of  our  heart.  .  .  .The  deputies 
of  the  French  Empire  and  of  the  Kingdom  of  Italy 
in  the  Hebrew  Synod,  full  o*f  gratitude  for  the  many 
kindnesses  and  protection  granted  the  Jews  by  the 
Catholic  clergy,  do  resolve  that  the  expression  of  our 
feelings  be  incorporated  in  the  records  of  this  day, 
that  it  forever  remain  in  authentic  testimony  of  the 
gratitude  of  the  Jewish  people."  Lettre  aux  Isrelites 
sur  I'attitude  qui  leur  convient  de  prendre  a  I'egard  de 
la  souverainete  temporelle  du  Pape.) 

Another  testimony  to  the  attitude  of  the  Church 
and  her  head  towards  the  oppressed  Israelites  was 
furnished  in  the  reply  of  Benedict  XV.  to  the  Ameri- 
can Jewish  Committee,  which  in  a  letter  to  the  Pope 
under  date  of  December  30,  191 5,  cited  instances  in 
Poland  by  which  Jews  ''have  been  marked  for  special 
persecution  and  have  been  subjected  to  oppressive 
measures  not  borne  by  compatriots  of  other  creeds." 
Among  other  things  the  petitioners  wrote :  "With  all 
due  veneration  we  now  approach  the  Supreme  Pontiff 
for  succor  in  this  the  bitter  hour  of  our  need,  knowing 
the  exemplary  humanity  for  which  your  Holiness  is 
justly  distinguished.  .  .  .We  recall  with  admiration  and 
gratitude  that  on  many  occasions  in  the  past  some  of 
the  revered  predecessors  of  your  Holiness  have,  under 
like  conditions,  extended  protection  to  those  of  the 
Jewish  faith  in  the  interest  of  right  and  justice. 
Appreciating  the  transcendent  importance  which  the 
entire  civilized  world  attaches  to  any  utterance  from 
so  exalted  a  source  of  morality  and  wisdom  as  that 
which  your  Holiness  represents,  we  confidently  express 
the  hope  that  timely  action  be  taken  by  the  Vatican 
to  the  end  that  the  suffering  under  which  millions  of 
our  brethren  in  faith  are  weighed  down  may  be  termi- 
nated by  an  act  of  that  humanity  to  which  your  Holt- 


298  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ness  is  so  passionately  devoted,  and  that  the  cruel 
intolerance  and  the  unjust  prejudice  which  have  been 
aroused  against  them  may  forever  vanish  before  this 
glorious  exercise  of  your  supreme  moral  and  spiritual 
power." 

To  this  communication,  signed  by  the  most  promi- 
nent representatives  of  the  Jewish  people  of  America, 
the  Pope's  Cardinal  Secretary  of  State  replied  in  a 
letter  ^'breathing  the  Christ-like  spirit  of  peace  and 
love,  reminding  all  of  the  principles  of  natural  right 
to  respect  all  men  as  brethren,  which  should  be 
observed  and  respected  in  relation  to  the  children  of 
Israel,  as  it  should  be  to  all  men,  for  it  would  not 
conform  to  justice  and  religion  itself,  to  derogate 
therefrom,  solely  because  of  a  difference  of  religious 
faith." 

Herman  Bernstein,  commenting  on  this  letter  in 
The  American  Hebrew,  says :  ''Among  all  the  Papal 
letters  ever  issued  with  regard  to  the  Jews  through- 
out the  history  of  the  Vatican,  there  is  no  statement 
that  equals  this  direct,  unmistakable  plea  for  equality 
for  the  Jews  and  against  prejudice  on  religious 
grounds.  The  Bull  issued  by  Innocent  IV.,  declaring 
the  Jews  innocent  of  the  charge  of  using  Christian 
blood  for  ritual  purposes,  while  a  remarkable  docu- 
ment, was,  after  all,  merely  a  statement  of  fact, 
whereas,  the  present  statement  by  Pope  Benedict  XV. 
is  a  plea  against  religious  prejudice  and  persecution." 

All  this  shows  Rome's  attitude  towards  the 
oppressed.  How  different  it  is  from  that  of  Luther 
as  evidenced  by  his  own  utterances  in  his  infamous 
work  "About  the  Jews  and  their  Lies"  which  brand 
him  beyond  power  of  contradiction  as  an  oppressor, 
a  tyrannical  anti-Semite. 

A  volume  might  be  filled  with  indubitable  facts  to 
prove  the  intolerant  spirit  of  Luther  and  of  the  various 
sects  which  his  rebellion  originated.  The  quarrels,  hos- 
tilities and  jealousies  that  constantly  arose  among  one 
and  all,  made  them  a  prey  to  the  fiercest  dissensions. 
They  anathematized  and  persecuted  each  other  with  the 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       299 

most  virulent  hatred  and  indulged  in  the  coarsest  and 
vilest  invective.  The  ultra-Lutherans  and  the  Melanch- 
thonians  mutually  denounced  each  other  and  even  re- 
fused to  unite  in  the  rites  of  communion  and  burial.  The 
Flaccianists  and  the  Strigelians,  the  Osiandrians  and 
the  Stancarians  and  many  other  new  sects  persecuted 
one  another  with  relentless  fury.  The  Lutherans, 
according  to  Professor  Fecht,  denounced  and  excluded 
the  reformed  Calvinists  from  salvation.  The  Calvinists 
roused  up  the  people  against  the  Lutherans,  who  in 
turn  mildly  and  charitably  designated  their  enemies  as 
"the  sons  of  the  devil."  Zwingle  complained  of 
Luther's  intolerance  when  he  was  the  victim  of  its 
violence,  but  when  he  became  almost  omnipotent  in 
Switzerland,  he  and  his  followers  threw  the  poor  Ana- 
baptists into  the  Rhine,  inclosed  in  sacks,  and  mocked 
them  at  the  same  time  with  the  inhuman  taunt  that 
"they  were  merely  baptizing  them  by  their  own  favorite 
method  of  immersion." 

The  other  reformers  were  not  a  whit  better  than 
Luther  in  reg^ard  to  toleration.  The  iniury  done  their 
cause  by  their  bickerings,  disunions  and  hostilities  did 
not  escape  their  own  notice.  Calvin,  for  instance,  fully 
aware  of  the  disastrous  results  accruing  from  the 
specious  principles  of  universal  liberty  by  which  the 
reformers  had  allured  multitudes  to  their  standard, 
wrote  to  Melanchthon :  "It  is  indeed  important  that 
posterity  should  not  know  of  our  differences ;  for  it 
is  indescribably  ridiculous  that  we,  who  are  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  whole  world,  should  be,  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  the  Reformation,  at  issue  among  ourselves." 
Melanchthon  wrote  in  answer  that  "the  Elbe  with  all 
its  waters  could  not  furnish  tears  enough  to  weep  over 
the  miseries  of  the  distracted  Reformation." 

The  whole  fabric  of  the  Reformation  threatened 
to  fall  to  pieces  at  its  very  rise  through  the  internal 
divisions  and  differences  which  Calvin  in  his  letter  to 
Melanchthon  was  so  anxious  "posterity  should  not 
know."  One  thing  alone  was  able  to  save  it  from 
destruction,  namely,  the  civil  power  whose  influence 


300  The  Facts  About  Luther 

and  assistance  the  leaders  in  religious  rebellion  very 
soon  learned  to  seek  and  obtain.  The  lawless  anarchy 
into  which  Protestantism  in  its  various  forms  had 
sunk  made  it  necessary,  if  it  would  survive,  to  place 
the  new  religions  under  the  protection  of  the  degen- 
erate princes  of  the  times,  who,  as  Melanchthon  admits, 
**had  in  view  neither  the  purification  of  Christianity, 
the  diffusion  of  learning,  the  exalting  of  a  creed,  nor 
the  improvement  of  morals;  but  only  interests  that 
were  miserable,  profane,  and  earthly,  adjudicating  to 
themselves  the  treasures  of  the  cloisters  and  religiously 
keeping  the  jewels  of  the  churches."  The  influence 
of  the  leaders  of  reform  being  on  the  wane  owing  to 
their  dissensions,  quarrels  and  intolerance,  they  saw 
clearly  that  their  only  hope  of  promoting  further  their 
power  and  ascendency  was  to  invoke  the  interposition 
and  backing  of  the  temporal  power  without  which 
their  movement  would  be  as  inevitably  suppressed  as 
had  been  the  commotions  of  the  Hussities  at  a  previous 
period. 

Luther,  who  was  by  no  means,  as  Frederic  von 
Schlegel  says,  "an  advocate  for  democracy,"  began  to 
''assert  the  absolute  power  of  rulers"  and  "zealously 
upheld,"  as  Menzel,  the  Protestant  historian  says, 
"their  princely  power,  the  divine  right  of  which,  he 
even  made  an  article  of  faith."  "Thus,"  he  continues, 
"through  Luther's  well-meant  policy,  the  Reforma- 
tion naturally  became  that  of  the  princes,  and,  con- 
sequently, instead  of  being  the  aim,  was  converted 
into  a  means  of  their  policy."  Not  satisfied  with 
catering  to  the  vanity  of  the  princes,  Luther,  who  in 
his  heart  despised  dominion  and  blasphemed  majesty, 
appealed  to  their  cupidity  by  promising  them  the 
spoils  of  sacrilege.  "Your  power,"  he  said  to  the 
German  princes,  "emanates  from  God  alone ;  you  have 
no  master  on  this  earth;  you  owe  nothing  to  the 
Pope.  Mind  your  own  affairs  and  let  him  mind  his. 
He  is  the  Antichrist  predicted  by  the  prophet  Daniel ; 
he  is  the  rnan  of  sin.  .  .  .You,  princes  and  nobles, 
owe  him  neither  first  fruits  nor  services  for  the  abbeys 


Free- Will  and  Libeuty  of  Conscience      301 

he  has  bestowed  upon  yon.  The  abbeys  are  as  much 
your  property  as  the  game  that  runs  on  your  lands. 
The  monasteries  in  which  these  pious  hypocrites  Hve 
are  dens  of  iniquity,  which  you  must  root  out,  if 
you  would  have  God  bless  you  in  this  life  or  in  the 
next."     (Audin,  Vol.  II,  i86,  i88.) 

At  the  beginning  of  Luther's  rebellion,  he  denied 
the  principle  of  authority,  then  encouraged  indi- 
viduahsm,  and,  finally,  promoted  resistance  to  estab- 
lished order  and  rule.  When  this  centrifugal  principle, 
which  is  the  very  basis  of  the  Reformation,  brought  on 
insurbordination,  uprising  and  popular  revolts,  he 
and  other  leaders  went  to  the  other  extreme  and 
justified  absolutism  and  the  use  of  despotic  means  in 
the  government  of  the  people.  So  Protestantism 
tended  inevitably  to  destroy  popular  rights  and 
liberty,  and,  at  the  same  time,  it  strengthened  the 
arbitrary  rule  of  princes,  who  lording  it  with 
rods  of  iron  over  both  the  bodies  and  souls  of  their 
subjects,  crushed  out  eventually  all  freedom,  both  civil 
and  rehgious. 

Hallam,  who  lived  and  died  a  Prostestant,  furnishes 
the  following  testimony  in  his  great  work,  *'The  Intro- 
duction to  the  History  of  Literature,"  Vol.  I,  p.  200, 
Sec.  34.  He  says,  "The  adherents  to  the  Church  of 
Rome  have  never  failed  to  cast  two  reproaches  on 
those  who  left  them ;  one,  that  the  Reform  was  brought 
about  by  intemperate  and  calumnious  abuse,  by  out- 
rages of  an  excited  populace  or  by  the  tyranny  of 
princes ;  the  other,  that  after  stimulating  the  most 
ignorant  to  reject  the  authority  of  their  Church,  it 
instantly  withdrew  this  liberty  of  judgment  and 
devoted  all,  who  presumed  to  swerve  from  the  line 
drawn  by  law,  to  virulent  obloquy,  and  sometimes  to 
bonds  and  death.  These  reproaches,  it  may  be  a  shame 
to  us  to  own,  can  be  uttered  and  cannot  be  refuted." 

The  favorite  plan  of  establishing  and  reinforcing 
the  Reformation  when  it  began  to  wane  and  totter 
was  by  violence  on  the  ruins  of  Catholic  institutions. 
The  Reformers  supported  the  princes  in  trampling  on 


302  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  liberties  of  the  people,  and,  in  return,  the  princes 
supported  the  new  beliefs.  The  result  was  that  abso- 
lute monarchy  prevailed  wherever  the  Protestant 
party  dominated.  Jurieu,  the  celebrated  Calvinist 
minister,  quoted  by  Audin  and  Alzog,  makes  this 
acknowledgmicnt :  ''Geneva,  Switzerland,  and  the  free 
cities,  the  electors,  and  the  German  princes,  England, 
Scotland,  Sweden  and  Denmark  got  rid  of  Popery 
and  established  the  Reformation  by  the  aid  of  the 
civil  power." 

The  vast  majority  of  the  people  wanted  to  be  and 
remain  Catholics,  but  the  State  forced  the  new 
religions  on  them  in  these  countries  against  their 
will,  and  progress  was  made  only  by  the  influence 
of  civil  power.  The  priests  of  the  Catholic  Church 
were  killed  off  and  hunted  like  criminals;  the  laity 
were  converted  by  the  rack,  the  thumbscrew,  the  dark 
cell,  the  peine  forte  et  dure,  fines,  imprisonment,  ban- 
ishment, stripes,  the  head-man's  axe,  the  gallows  and 
the  disemboweling  knife.  Their  property  was  con- 
fiscated and  convents,  abbeys,  priories,  monasteries, 
churches,  passed  into  the  hands  of  greedy  potentates 
and  their  servile  courtiers.  Such  were  the  methods  and 
means  invariably  resorted  to  by  the  leaders  of 
Protestantism  to  foist  the  new  religion  on  the  people. 
Was  this  toleration  or  oppression? 

Plain  men  may  well  look  round  them,  and  ask  if 
these  things  can  be.  But  all  this  is  no  hideous  mis- 
quotation or  miisrepresentation.  The  facts  are  only 
too  evident.  Non-Catholic  writers,  as  a  rule,  describe 
Luther  and  his  work  in  the  most  glowing  and  favor- 
able terms.  Many  others,  however,  better  informed 
and  more  enlightened,  have,  in  all  fairness  and  candor, 
humbly  apprehended  that  the  free  exercise  of  private 
judgment  was  most  heartily  abhorred  by  the  first 
Reformers,  except  only  where  the  persons  who 
assumed  it  happened  to  be  exactly  of  their  way  of 
thinking. 

The  late  Protestant  bishop  Warburton  vs^as  not 
afraid  to  give  the  following  character  of  the  pretended 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      303 

advocates  of  civil  and  religious  freedom;  ''The 
Reformers,  Luther,  Calvin,  and  their  followers,  under- 
stood so  little  in  what  true  Christianity  consisted  that 
they  carried  with  them  into  the  reformed  churches, 
that  very  spirit  of  persecution  which  had  driven  them 
from  the  Church  of  Rome."  The  Protestant  historian 
Hallam  also  tells  the  truth  when  he  says  in  his  "Con- 
stitution History,"  page  63 :  "Persecution  is  the  deadly 
original  sin  of  the  Reformed  churches,  that  which 
cools  every  honest  man's  zeal  for  their  cause,  in  pro- 
portion as  his  reading  becomes  extensive." 

Gibbon,  in  his  "Rise  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire,"  Ch.  LIV,  says  :  "The  patriot  reformers  were 
ambitious  of  succeeding  the  tyrants  whom  they 
dethroned.  They  imposed,  with  equal  vigor,  their 
creeds  and  confessions.  They  asserted  the  right  of 
the  magistrate  to  punish  the  heretic  with  death." 

Strickland  in  her  "Queens  of  England,"  says :  "It 
is  a  lamentable  trait  in  human  nature  that  there  was 
not  a  sect  established  at  the  Reformation  that  did  not 
avow,  as  part  of  their  religious  duty,  the  horrible 
necessity  of  destroying  some  of  their  fellow-creatures 
on  account  of  what  they  severally  termed  heretical 
tenets." 

Guizot,  in  his  "History  of  Civilization,"  pp.  261- 
262,  says :  "The  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century 
was  not  aware  of  the  true  principles  of  intellectual 
liberty.  .  .  .On  the  one  side  it  did  not  know  or  respect 
all  the  rights  of  human  thought ;  at  the  very  moment 
it  was  demanding  these  rights  for  itself  it  was  violating 
them  towards  others.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was 
unable  to  estimate  the  rights  of  authority  in  the  matters 
of  reason." 

Macaulay,  in  his  "Essays"  :  Hampden,  says :  "Rome 
had  at  least  prescription  on  its  side.  But  Protestant 
intolerance,  despotism  in  an  upstart  sect,  infallibility 
claimed  by  guides  who  acknowledge  that  they  had 
passed  the  greater  part  of  their  lives  in  error,  restraints 
imposed  on  the  liberty  of  private  judgment  at  the 
pleasure  of  rulers  who  could  vindicate  their  own  pro- 


304  The  Facts  About  Luther 

ceedings  only  by  asserting  the  liberty  of  private  judg- 
ment— these  things  could  not  long  be  borne.  Those 
who  had  pulled  down  the  crucifix  could  not  long 
continue  to  persecute  for  the  surplice.  It  required 
no  great  sagacity  to  perceive  the  inconsistency  and 
dishonesty  of  men  who,  dissenting  from  almost  all 
Christendom,  would  suffer  none  to  dissent  from  them- 
selves; who  demanded  freedom  of  conscience,  yet 
refused  to  grant  it;  who  execrated  persecution,  yet 
persecuted ;  who  urged  reason  against  the  authority 
of  one  opponent,  and  authority  against  the  reason  of 
another." 

Lecky,  in  his  ''Rationalism  in  Europe,"  Vol.  I,  p. 
51,  ed.  1870,  says:  ''What  shall  we  say  of  a  church 
that  was  but  a  thing  of  yesterday;  a  church  that  had 
as  yet  no  services  to  show,  no  claims  upon  the  grati- 
tude of  mankind ;  a  church  that  was  by  profession 
the  creature  of  private  judgment,  and  was  in  reality 
generated  by  the  intrigues  of  a  corrupt  court,  which 
nevertheless  suppressed  by  force  a  worship  that  multi- 
tudes deemed  necessary  to  salvation ;  which  by  all 
her  organs  and  with  all  her  energies  persecuted  those 
who  clung  to  the  religion  of  their  fathers?  What 
shall  we  say  of  a  religion  which  comprised  at  most, 
but  a  fourth  part  of  the  Christian  world,  and  which 
the  first  explosion  of  private  judgment  had  shivered 
into  countless  sects,  which  was  nevertheless  so  per- 
vaded by  the  spirit  of  dogmatism  that  each  of  these 
sects  asserted  its  distinctive  doctrines  with  the  same 
confidence,  and  persecuted  with  the  same  unhesitating 
violence,  as  a  church  which  was  venerable  with  the 
homage  of  twelve  centuries?.  .  .  .So  strong  and  so 
general  was  its  intolerance  that  for  some  time  it  may, 
I  believe,  be  truly  said  that  there  were  more  instances 
of  partial  toleration  being  advocated  by  Rome..*  Cath- 
olics than  by  orthodox  Protestants." 

The  foregoing  quotations  from  reliable  Protestant 
authors  show  how  the  Reformers  believed  in  the  rights 
of  conscience  and  how  they  practised  reli^ous  liberty. 
It  is,  moreover,  a  remarkable  fact,  that  their  followers 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       305 

have  been  guilty  of  persecution  wherever  they  have  had 
the  power,  not  only  against  the  Catholic  Church,  but 
against  one  another;  and  their  intolerance,  though 
greatly  mitigated,  is  even  at  the  present  enlightened 
day  far  from  being  extinct. 

But  have  not  Catholics,  who  boast  that  persecution 
is  not,  and  never  has  been  a  doctrine  of  their  Church, 
persecuted  in  times  past?  We  do  not  deny  it;  but 
we  answer  that  they  did  so  as  individuals  and  in  direct 
opposition  to  the  teaching  of  their  Church.  "Yet 
every'  impartial  person,''  as  Abp.  Spalding  says,  "must 
allow  that  the  circumstances  under  which  they  perse- 
cuted were  not  so  aggravated,  nor  so  wholly  without 
excuse,  as  those  under  which  they  were  themselves 
persecuted  by  Protestants.  The  former  stood  on  the 
defensive,  while  the  latter  were  in  almost  every 
instance  the  first  aggressors.  The  Catholics  did  but 
repel  violence  by  violence,  when  their  property,  their 
altars  and  all  they  held  sacred,  were  rudely  invaded 
by  the  new  religionists,  under  pretext  of  reform.  Their 
acts  of  severity  were  often  deemed  necessary  meas- 
ures of  precaution  against  the  deeds  of  lawless  vio- 
lence, which  everyv/here  marked  the  progress  of 
reform.  They  did  but  seek  the  privilege  of  retain- 
ing quietly  the  religion  of  their  fathers,  which 
the  reformers  would  fain  have  wrested  from  them 
by  violence.  They  were  the  older  and  they  were  in 
possession.  Could  it  be  expected  that  they  would 
yield  without  a  strugg^le  all  that  they  held  most  dear 
and  most  sacred?  There  were  extenuating:  circum- 
stances, which,  though  they  might  not  wholly  justify 
their  intolerance,  yet  greatly  mitieated  its  malice ; 
while  the  reformers  could  certainly  allege  no  such 
pretext  in  self-vindication.'' 

The  Catholic  Church  has  always  favored  religious 
liberty  and  is  to-day  its  most  ardent  defender  and 
supporter.  Facts  are  more  convincing  than  argu- 
ments and  Catholics  are  willing  that,  as  to  religious 
liberty,  they  be  put  to  the  test  laid  down  by  the 
Bible ;     "By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them."     It  is 


306  The  Facts  About  Luther 

a  fact  that  in  this  day  and  hour  the  Cathohc  coun- 
tries of  Europe  are  far  in  advance  of  the  Protestant 
countries  in  respect  to  religious  independence.  There  is 
not  one  Catholic  government  on  that  continent  which 
persecutes  its  subjects  for  conscience's  sake  and  there  is 
not  one  Protestant  country  in  which  Catholics  enjoy 
equal  rights  and  privileges  with  the  members  of  the 
established  religion.  In  England,  Catholics  are 
merely  tolerated;  in  Switzerland,  they  suffer  from 
religious  disabilities ;  in  Sweden,  Holland,  Denmark 
and  Prussia,  their  conscientious  convictions  are  dis- 
criminated against ;  and  as  for  Russia,  their  treatment 
is  notoriously  contrary  to  the  demands  of  justice  and 
of  Christian  charity.  On  the  contrary  in  all  Catholic 
countries,  without  any  exception,  where  there  is  not 
and  never  was  a  governmentally  established  church, 
the  great  principle  of  universal  toleration  is  sedulously 
exercised,  and  all.  Catholics  and  Protestants  alike, 
enjoy  the  blessings  not  only  of  religious  but  of  civil 
rights  and  privileges.  There  is  no  room  under  Cath- 
olic teaching  and  principles  for  intolerance  and  perse- 
cution. 

The  accusation  that  Catholic  doctrine  teaches  that 
no  faith  is  to  be  kept  with  heretics  is  totally  unfounded. 
The  religion  of  Catholics  obliges  them  to  respect  the 
rights  of  others,  and  any  apprehensions  as  to  the  dan- 
ger of  their  violating  their  sacred  duty  towards  those  of 
an  opposite  faith,  are  the  result  of  vain  fears,  which 
no  honest  mind  ought  to  harbor.  All  Catholics  desire 
is  to  live  together  with  their  Protestant  neighbors 
quietly  and  peaceably,  each  and  all  worshipping  God 
as  their  conscience  honestly  directs. 

Catholics,  it  should  be  remembered,  were  the  first  in 
America  to  proclaim  and  to  practise  civil  and  religious 
liberty.  While  all  the  English  colonies  in  the  New 
World  were  practising  persecution,  while  Protestants 
of  one  sect  were  everywhere  intolerant  of  every  other 
sect,  the  colony  established  by  Lord  Baltimore  in 
Maryland  granted  civil  and  religious  liberty  to  all  who 
professed  different  beliefs.    From  this  abode  of  happi- 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience      307 

ness  and  good  will  towards  all,  the  principle  of  freedom 
spread  until  there  was  hardly  a  colony  on  this  broad 
continent  that  did  not  make  universal  toleration  a 
settled  law  of  the  land.  The  glory  of  being  the  first 
to  raise  the  banner  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  in 
this  country  belongs  to  Catholics  and  none  can  deny 
or  rob  them  of  it.  This  glory  is  all  the  greater, 
because  at  that  very  time  the  Puritans  of  New  England 
and  the  Episcopalians  of  Virginia  were  busily  engaged 
in  persecuting  their  brother  Protestant  for  conscience's 
sake ;  and  the  former  were  moreover  enacting  proscrip- 
tive  ''blue  laws"  and  ''hanging  witches."  Ever  since 
that  far  off  day  and  before,  when  Columbus  planted 
the  Cross,  the  emblem  of  Christianity,  upon  American 
soil,  Catholics  have  stood  side  by  side  with  men  of 
every  creed  in  every  human  effort  to  make  this  the 
grandest  and  the  freest  nation  in  the  world.  Through- 
out all  these  years  the  country  grew  and  developed 
because  there  has  been  good  fellowship,  mutual  respect 
and  hearty  co-operation  for  the  common  good. 

But,  alas,  here  in  the  morning  of  the  twentieth 
century,  here  at  a  time  when  we  have  reached  a  perhaps 
unparalleled  plane  of  general  intelligence,  at  a  time 
when  we  have  lived  together  as  neighbors  and 
friends  long  enough  to  become  well  acquainted ; 
when  we  have  mingled  together  in  social  and 
business  and  fraternal  Hfe,  here  in  such  an  era, 
we  have  thousands  of  misguided  men  foisting  them- 
selves upon  peaceful  communities,  scattering  the  seed 
of  discord  and  religious  hate  and  pouring  forth  their 
vile  abuse  of  everything  Catholic.  They  are  not 
content  to  have  civil  and  religious  liberty  for  them- 
selves, but  desire  to  deny  it  to  Catholics,  as  is  proved 
in  many  instances,  especially  by  the  fact  that  no  Cath- 
olic can  be  elected  President  of  the  United  States, 
no  matter  how  competent  he  may  be.  To  advance 
their  wicked  purposes,  they  go  about  with  flag  in 
hand,  which  they  stain  with  their  dirty  fingers,  to 
form  Know-Nothing  societies  like  the  Patriotic  Order 
of    Sons   of   America,   the    junior   Order   of   United 


308  The  Facts  About  Luther 

American  Mechanics,  the  Order  of  Independent 
Americans,  the  Luther  League,  the  Guardians  of 
Liberty,  etc.,  etc.,  all  pretending  to  be  patriotic,  but 
really  persecuting  and  bigoted ;  all  pretending  to  sup- 
port American  institutions,  but  really  trampling  on 
the  Constitution,  which  prohibits  the  establishment  of 
any. religion  or  the  requirement  of  any  religious  test 
for  public  office ;  all  pretending  to  favor  religious 
liberty,  but  really  plotting  to  violate  it  whenever  Cath- 
olics are  concerned. 

The  flame  of  bigotry,  which  these  malicious  societies 
are  now  so  vigorously  fanning  throughout  the  length 
and  breadth  of  this  great  country,  cannot  last  for 
long.  Their  creatures  are  being  swatted  on  all  sides. 
Ex- President  Taft  has  dubbed  them  "Cockroaches" 
and  President  Wilson  brands  them  as  "Swashbucklers." 
Only  ignorant  fanatics  are  duped  by  the  unclean  birds 
of  prey.  Our  Protestant  fellow-citizens  are  level- 
headed enough  to  see  that  Catholics  are  just  as  keen 
for  their  country's  welfare  and  glory  as  they  them- 
selves, just  as  ready  to  defend  it,  work  for  it  and 
shed  their  blood  for  it  as  any  in  the  land.  They 
recognize  that  there  is  no  just  ground  for  any  oppo- 
sition to  Catholics,  and  as  they  are  not  fools  they  are 
not  going  to  swallow  the  foul,  calumnious,  and  filthy 
accusations  against  Catholics  by  which  bigots,  knaves 
and  fanatics  would  destroy  the  mutual  trust  and 
understanding  between  citizens  of  a  common  country 
and  with  a  common  cause.  Their  mentality  is  still 
sound  and  their  hearts  are  in  the  right  place.  They 
believe  that  all  citizens  irrespective  of  nationality 
and  creed  must  be  friends,  and  to  them  no  other 
relation  is  conceivable.  They  are  aware  of  the  specific 
objects  of  the  evil  doers,  their  insincerity  and  the 
utter  lack  of  religion  that  exists  among  them  and  so 
they  have  come  to  consider  the  promoters  of  bigotry, 
the  calamity  howler,  the  alarmist  and  those  editors 
who  are  bent  on  filling  their  pockets  by  publishing  the 
lying  and  the  riot-breeding  literature  that  stirs  up 
hatred   and   enmity   between   Protestantism   and   the 


Free-Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       309 

Catholic  Church,  as  a  menace  to  civilization,  to  govern- 
ment, to  the  brotherly  feeling  that  all  of  all  faiths 
should  strive  to  cultivate. 

The  end  of  the  hellish  work  of  hatred  is  in  sight, 
and  all  decent,  fair-minded  and  intelligent  Protestants 
are  daily  becoming  more  disgusted  with  the  methods 
of  vilification,  mendacity  and  slanderous  insinuation, 
which  most  of  the  breeders  of  hatred  get  from  Luther, 
who  was  dismissed  from  the  Catholic  Church  because 
he  preached  heresy  and  practised  iniquity.  The  best 
amongst  non-Catholics  are  determined  to  be  no  longer 
taken  in  by  such  frauds  and  gross  swindlers  and  they 
feel  the  time  has  come  for  a  closer  union  of  Protes- 
tants and  Catholics  to  combat  the  real  evils  of  the 
day,  the  evils  that  are  bringing  disaster  to  our  Amer- 
ican civilization.  "The  great  enemy  which  the  State, 
which  Catholics  and  Protestants  alike  have  to  resist 
and  vanquish  by  education,"  as  Dr.  Brownson  remarks, 
'is  the  irreligion,  pantheism,  atheism,  and  immorality, 
disguised  as  secularism,  or  under  the  specious  names 
of  science,  humanity,  free-religion,  and  free-love, 
which  not  only  strike  at  all  Christian  faith  and  Chris- 
tian morals,  but  at  the  family,  the  State,  and  civilized 
society  itself." 

The  learned  publicist  further  remarks :  "The  State 
can  not  regard  this  enemy  with  indiflPerence.  .  .  .The 
American  State  is  not  infidel  or  godless,  and  is  bound 
always  to  recognize  and  actively  aid  religion  as  far 
as  in  its  power.  Having  no  spiritual  or  theological 
competency,  it  has  no  right  to  undertake  to  say  what 
shall  or  shall  not  be  the  religion  of  its  citizens;  it 
must  accept,  protect,  and  aid  the  religion  its  citizens 
see  proper  to  adopt,  and  without  partiality  for  the 
religion  of  the  majority  any  more  than  the  religion 
of  the  minority;  for  in  regard  to  religion  the  rights 
and  powers  of  minorities  and  majorities  are  equal. 
The  State  is  under  the  Christian  law,  and  it  is  bound 
to  protect  and  enforce  Christian  morals  and  its  laws, 
whether  assailed  by  Mormonism,  spiritism,  free-lovism, 
pantheism,  or  atheism. 


310  The  Facts  About  Luther 

"The  modem  world  has  strayed  far  from  this  doc- 
trine, which  in  the  early  history  of  this  country  nobody 
questioned.  The  departure  may  be  falsely  called 
progress  and  boasted  of  as  a  result  of  'the  march  of 
intellect';  but  it  must  be  arrested,  and  men  must  be 
recalled  to  the  truths  they  have  left  behind,  if  repub- 
lican government  is  to  be  maintained  and  Christian 
society  preserved.  Protestants  who  see  and  deplore 
the  departure  from  the  old  landm.arks  will  find  them- 
selves unable  to  arrest  the  downward  tendency  without 
our  aid,  and  little  aid  shall  we  be  able  to  render  them 
unless  the  Church  be  free  to  use  the  public  schools 
— that  is,  her  portion  of  them — to  bring  up  her  chil- 
dren in  her  own  faith  and  train  them  to  be  good 
Catholics.  There  is  a  recrudescence  of  paganism,  a 
growth  of  subtle  and  disguised  infidelity,  which  it  will 
require  all  that  both  they  and  we  can  do  to  arrest." 

It  then  behooves  all  who  love  liberty  to  stand 
together  unto  the  destruction  of  the  enemies  of  our 
glorious  republic. 

The  descendants  of  Luther  and  the  modern  exem- 
plars of  his  spirit  of  hatred  would  do  well  to  remember 
that  the  Catholic  Church  was  born,  brought  up,  and 
maintained  through  persecution.  If,  indeed,  she  had 
no  longer  adversaries,  her  members  would  need  to 
despair  of  the  promises  of  her  Divine  Founder.  It 
would  be  impossible  for  her  to  pass  through  severer 
ordeals  than  she  has  in  her  past  and  especially  at 
the  time  of  the  so-called  Reformation.  Experience 
has  proved,  over  and  over  again,  that  the  powers  of 
hell,  however  determined  in  doing  so,  cannot  extir- 
pate Catholicism  by  force  from  the  midst  of  the 
peoples  and  the  nations.  The  Church  thrives  under 
persecution,  for  to  suffer  for  Christ's  sake  is  a  signal 
honor,  and  martyrdom  is  a  crown  of  glory.  The 
Christians,  as  Lactantius  says,  "conquer  the  world  not 
by  slaying  but  by  being  slain."  Men  are  so  constituted 
that  they  do  not  really  love  that  which  costs  them  no 
sacrifice.  Just  as  the  soldier,  who  has  suffered  for 
his  country,  holds  it  in  deeper  affection,  so  the  child 


Free- Will  and  Liberty  of  Conscience       311 

of  the  Church  loves  her  the  more  if  he  has  had  to 
suffer  on  her  account.  As  long  as  struggle  and  oppo- 
sition continue  the  Church  will  live  and  flourish.  There 
is  so  much  vitality  in  her  that  all  her  haters  can 
harm  her  little.  Ever  so  many,  Nero,  Julian,  Henry 
VIII.,  Luther,  Calvin,  Zwingle  and  their  deluded  imi- 
tators, have  gone  to  their  graves  after  living  a  life 
of  fierce  opposition  to  everything  Catholic,  and  yet 
the  Church  lives  on,  proving  over  and  over  the  state- 
ment of  Gamaliel  to  the  Jewish  council;  *'If  this  be 
the  work  of  men,  it  will  come  to  naught.  But  if  it  be 
of  God,  you  cannot  overthrow  it."  The  temporary 
harm,  which  those  inflict  who  indulge  in  attacks 
against  the  Church,  of  whose  history,  teaching  and 
precepts  they  are  ignorant,  is  more  than  offset  by  the 
ultimate  good.  Divine  vitality  permeates  the  whole 
Church  and  no  persecution,  however  frightful  or 
excruciating,  can  prevail  against  her.  The  Master  is 
with  her.  The  enemy  cannot  conquer.  She  is  Heaven- 
protected  and  will  remain,  in  spite  of  all  opposition, 
to  the  end  of  time  to  preach  to  mankind,  as  she  ever 
did  in  the  past,  the  inestimable  blessings  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer. 

EVER  since  the  day  when  the  Saxon  monk*s  hammer 
on  the  church  door  at  Wittenberg  sounded  the 
signal. for  rebellion  against  spiritual  and  ecclesiastical 
authority,  Luther's  admirers  have  persistently  and  uni- 
formly held  him  up  before  the  world  as  a  "great 
religious  reformer."  Their  hero  in  a  highly  sensitized 
imagination  fancied  that  he  had  a  direct  Divine  mission 
to  reform  the  Church  of  Christ,  and,  that,  as  he  said, 
he  ''was  by  God's  revelation  called  to  be  a  sort  of 
anti-pope."  Men  after  his  own  heart,  deluded,  proud 
in  intellect  and  revolutionary  in  tendency,  gave  willing 
credence  to  the  self-asserted  prerogative,  and,  believing 
without  question  his  pretended  claim  to  be  true,  they 
blindly  chanted  his  praises  and  invited  all  to  unite  with 
them  in  paying  him  tribute.  In  all  courtesy,  but  with 
entire  frankness,  we  make  bold  to  say  that  did  these 
men  make  a  profound  and  exhaustiA^e  study  of  Luther's 
writings  and  acts,  they  would  soon  cease  their  lauda- 
tions and  discover  for  themselves  how  his  life  and 
teaching  were  distinctly  and  openly  at  variance  with 
any  conception  of  a  "God-inspired  man"  and  a  true 
"spiritual  leader." 

The  title  "religious  reformer"  is  a  proud  and  signifi- 
cant one.  To  wear  it  with  honor,  it  is  not  enough  merely 
to  apply' it  to  oneself;  nor  is  it  becoming  in  others  to 
confer  it  on  any  one  unless  the  subject  is  distinguished 
for  virtue  and  the  purpose  he  has  in  view  is  the  restora- 
tion of  discipline  relaxed,  as  well  as  the  renewal  of  the 
standard  of  holy  living  to  its  pristine  purity.  From  the 
beginning  all  who  have  arisen  from  the  midst  of  their 
brethren  charged  with  a  distinct  message  from  God  to 
assail  corruption  and  to  raise  men  from  earth  to  heaven, 
began  their  noble  and  sacred  mission  by  first  improving 
and  reforming  themselves.  It  is  rightly  expected  that 
the  moral  leader  of  his  generation  should  walk  in  that 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  313 

"holiness  without  which  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord." 
The  true  reformer,  as  Anderdon  remarks,  '"should  be 
as  Elias,  or  the  Baptist,  in  his  moral  height  and  per- 
sonal detachment ;  as  Nathan,  in  his  rebuke  of 
licentious  and  murderous  sin ;  as  Daniel  in  his  fastings, 
in  his  self -affliction,  in  his  tearful  supplications  for 
God's  people.  "  He  must,  in  a  word,  be  able  to  say 
with  St.  Paul :  "Be  ye  followers  of  me,  as  I  also  am  of 
Christ."  "Be  ye  followers  of  me,  brethren,  and  observe 
them  who  walk  so  as  you  have  our  model."  It  is  plain, 
then,  that  any  one  who  sets  himself  up  to  be  a  moral 
leader  should  first  begin  by  reforming  himself,  for  it 
is  only  then  men  become  impressed,  subdued  and 
reclaimed.  The  irresistible  persuasiveness  of  an 
upright  and  holy  life,  backed  by  the  intrinsic  truth 
of  the  real  reformer's  preaching,  alone  carries  con- 
viction and  brings  about  a  loving  compliance  with 
Divine  injunctions — the  sure  and  sole  foundation  of  all 
reformation  worthy  of  the  name. 

When  we  turn  now  to  Luther  and  ask  him  why  he 
claimed  to  be  a  religious  reformer  and  why  he  posed 
as  one  entrusted  by  Heaven  with  a  great  and  holy 
mission,  we  are  not  only  astonished,  but  dumbfounded 
to  discover  that  his  title  was  self-assumed  and  without 
warrant,  and,  that,  moreover,  his  qualifications  for 
the  work  of  reform  were  of  such  a  nature  as  to  impress 
the  wise  with  the  conviction  that  he  received  no  call 
from  Heaven  to  inaugurate  and  carry  out  a  moral 
rejuvenation  in  either  Church  or  State.  Unlike  the 
saintly  preachers  of  God's  truth  of  all  times,  he  was 
in  no  way  ever  under  a  sense  of  his  own  personal  need 
of  improvement  and  was  in  consequence  utterly  incapa- 
ble and  unfitted  to  elevate  unto  righteousness  any 
among  the  brethren.  As  an  inspired  instrument  of 
God  to  work  out  with  success  a  genuine  religious  re- 
form, he  stands  out  as  the  supreme  contradiction  in 
the  histor}^  of  all  we  know  concerning  Heaven's  deal- 
ings with  fallen  nature  in  relation  to  its  uplift  and 
improvement. 

Everv  one  who  is  in  the  least   familiar  with  the 


314  The  Facts  About  Luther 

literature  of  the  so-called  Reformation  and  especially 
with  that  part  of  it  which  touches  on  the  life  of  the 
pretended  reformer,  must  appreciate  his  utter  lack 
of  constructive  genius,  his  depraved  manners  and 
utterances  and  his  perversity  of  principle  coupled  with 
falsity  of  teaching.  He  has  nowhere  and  at  no  time 
given  his  hearers  a  complete,  methodical  and  reasoned 
synthesis  of  God-given  doctrine.  He  is  inconsistent, 
illogical :  he  is  not  afraid  to  contradict  to-day  the  state- 
ments of  yesterday.  It  is,  then,  absurd  beyond  the 
power  of  expression  to  imagine  that  any  one  so  noted 
as  Luther  for  the  ungovernable  transports,  riotous 
proceedings,  angry  conflicts  and  intemperate  contro- 
versies that  made  up  the  greater  part  of  his  life,  could 
be  an  instrument  of  God  to  bring  about  and  to  effect 
a  moral  and  religious  reform.  To  discover  the  notes 
of  a  messenger  of  God  in  one  who  had  so  little  regard 
for  merely  ordinary'  proprieties  and  whose  language 
was  usually  so  coarse  and  disgusting  that  to  quote  it 
one  would  need  to  saturate  the  atmosphere  with  anti- 
septics and  avoid  coming  into  collision  with  the  civil 
authorities,  presupposes  a  partiality  amounting  to 
blindness.  That  he  was  a  deformer  and  not  a  reformer 
is  the  honest  verdict  of  all  who  are  not  blind  partisans 
and  who  know  the  man  at  close  vision  for  what  he 
was  and  for  what  he  stood  sponsor. 

It  has  long  since  been  said  by  Cicero  that  "most 
men  are  determined  in  their  views  by  their  mental 
and  spiritual  condition."  This  was  undoubtedly  the 
case  with  Luther  and  what  that  condition  was  on  moral 
questions,  on  matrimony,  on  the  dignity  of  man  and 
on  kindred  matters,  we  learn  from  himself.  His  own 
utterances,  his  doubts,  his  terrors  and  those  compunc- 
tious visitings  of  a  disturbed  conscience,  which  seem 
at  one  time  at  least  to  have  made  his  life  a  torture, 
prove  conclusively  that  he  was  not  a  God-inspired  man 
and  had  no  claim  to  be  considered  even  an  ordinary 
reformer  or  spiritual  guide. 

In  studying  Luther,  we  must  remember,  that  his 
cardinal  dogma  when  he  abandoned  Catholic  teaching, 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  315 

was  that  man  has  no  free-will,  that  he  can  do  no  good 
and  that  to  subdue  animal  passion  is  neither  necessary 
nor  possible.  He  insisted  that  the  moral  law  of  the 
Decalogue  is  not  binding,  that  the  Ten  Commandments 
are  abrogated  and  that  they  are  no  longer  in  force 
among  Christians.  "V/e  must,"  he  says,  ''remove  the 
Decalogue  out  of  sight  and  heart."  (De  Wette,  4,  188.) 
''If  we  allow  them — the  Commandments — any  inliuence 
in  our  conscience,  they  become  the  cloak  of  all  evil, 
heresies  and  blasphemies."  (Comm.  ad  Galat.  p.  310.) 
"If  Moses  should  attempt  to  intimidate  you  with  his 
stupid  Ten  Commandments,  tell  him  right  out :  chase 
yourself  to  the  Jews."  (Wittenb.  ad.  5,  1573.)  Having 
thus  unceremoniously  brushed  aside  the  binding  force 
of  the  moral  law,  we  do  not  wonder  that  he  makes  the 
following  startling  and  shameless  pronouncements. 
*'As  httle  as  one  is  able,"  he  says,  "to  remove  moun- 
tains, to  fly  with  the  birds  (Mist  und  Harn  halten), 
to  create  new  stars,  or  to  bite  off  one's  nose,  so  little 
can  one  escape  unchastity."  (Alts  Abend  Mahletre,  2, 
118.)  Out  of  the  depths  of  his  depraved  mind,  he 
further  declares :  "They  are  fools  who  attempt  to 
overcome  temptations  (temptations  to  lewdness)  by 
fasting,  prayer  and  chastisement.  For  such  tempta- 
tions and  immoral  attacks  are  easily  overcome  when 
there  are  plenty  of  maidens  and  women."  (Jen.  ed. 
2,  p.  216.) 

The  filthiness  embodied  in  this  pronouncement  is 
shocking.  When  we  note  the  unbecoming  language  in 
which  he  couches  his  degrading  teaching,  how,  we  must 
ask  ourselves,  can  its  author  be  called  "a  messenger  and 
a  man  of  God?"  Would  his  warmest  advocates  dare 
in  this  day  and  generation  to  repeat  his  words  either 
in  private  or  in  public  ?  Would  any  Lutheran  minister 
of  the  period  be  so  lost  to  shame  and  common  decency 
as  to  quote  these  in  the  presence  of  his  family  or  sound 
them  from  his  pulpit?  Would  any  man  using  such 
language  in  our  day  be  a  welcome  guest  at  the  table 
of  any  of  the  ministers  belonging  to  the  seventeen 
different  brands   of   Lutheranism?     Could   any   man 


316  The  Facts  About  Luther 

uttering  such  filthy  speech  possibly  enter  into  matri- 
mony imbued  with  those  high  ideals  which  are  the  glory 
of  Christianity,  so  as  to  enable  him  to  become  a  model 
husband  or  father,  and  to  inspire  his  neighbors  to 
practise  domestic  virtue?  Why,  then,  call  Luther  a 
reformer,  one  who  would  not  in  our  times  be  regarded 
fit  to  be  entrusted  with  police  duty  in  the  worst  slums 
of  our  cities,  much  less  to  be  made  the  presiding  officer 
of  a  Vice  Purity  Committee?  Like  Bullinger,  the 
Swiss  reformer,  we  stand  aghast  at  what  he  calls 
Luther's  ''muddy  and  swinish,  vulgar  and  coarse 
teachings.'*  The  indelicate  and  grossly  filthy  expres- 
sion of  this  man's  views  on  Christian  morality  reminds 
us  of  the  apt  saying  of  St.  Jude:  "By  thy  words  thou 
shalt  be  justified,  and  by  thy  words  thou  shall  be 
condemned." 

It  is  not  an  agreeable  task  to  attack  a  man's  moral 
character,  but  Luther's  mouth  is  to  blame  for  the 
exposition  of  the  corruption  that  seemed  to  be  down 
deep  in  his  heart.  This  so-called  physician  of  souls, 
while  he  cannot  "heal  himself,"  must  yet  needs  mani- 
fest himself,  as  "raging  waves  of  the  sea,"  foaming 
out  "his  own  shame" ;  because  his  tongue  and  his 
devices  were  "against  the  Lord,  to  provoke  the  eyes  of 
His  Majesty."  It  is  well  perhaps  he  should  proclaim 
his  sin  "as  Sodom,  and  not  hide  it,"  for  the  interests 
of  humanity  and  to  save  "men  of  good  will"  from  his 
poison.  The  serpent's  rattle  made  itself  distinctly 
heard  in  his  unholy  utterances  and  though  he  presumed 
to  be  the  "doctor  of  doctors"  and  declared  all  besides 
"asses  and  rascals,"  his  expression  of  the  moral  views 
he  entertained  shows  beyond  peradventure  that  he  was 
not  a  man  in  any  way  fit  to  lead  others  unto  reforma- 
tion and  sanctity  of  life. 

After  Luther's  break  with  Rome  and  when  his  piety 
grew  cold,  he  gained  a  bad  name  for  himself  owing 
to  his  loose  teachings  on  morality  and  his  general 
lightness  of  behavior.  To  say  the  least,  his  pronounce- 
ments on  delicate  questions  were  rather  lax,  and,  as 
might  be  expected,  his  conduct  and  example  could  not 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  31V 

but  have  been  in  keeping  with  them.  It  is  well  known 
that  he  was  pretty  generally  and  often  openly  accused 
by  his  enemies,  both  Catholic  and  Protestant,  of 
extremely  grave  moral  delinquencies.  No  doubt 
there  was  considerable  exaggeration  in  the  accusations 
brought  against  him,  but  it  nevertheless  remains  true 
that  many  of  his  faults  and  failings  against  morality 
cannot  be  denied  or  gainsaid.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
he  was  openly  blamed  for  his  well  known  and  impru- 
dent intimacy  with  Katherine  Von  Bora  before  his 
marriage  and  Melanchthon  severely  censured  him  for 
his  lack  of  personal  dignity,  his  loose  behavior  and 
coarse  jests  in  the  company  of  his  intimates  and  even 
in  the  presence  of  the  nuns  he  helped  in  violation  of 
Germanic  law  to  escape  from  their  convents. 

Hieronimus  Dungersheim,  an  eminent  theologian  of 
Leipzig,  indignant  at  his  conduct,  which  little  became 
one  who  thought  he  was  called  to  reform  the  Church 
and  the  age,  puts  this  question  in  his  "Thirty  Articles" 
to  Luther;  "What  are  your  thoughts  when  you  are 
seated  in  the  midst  of  the  herd  of  apostate  nuns  whom 
you  have  seduced  and,  as  they  themselves  admit,  make 
whatever  jokes  occur  to  you?  You  not  only  do  not  at- 
tempt to  avoid  what  you  declare  is  so  hateful  to  you 
(the  exciting  of  sensuality),  but  you  intentionally  stir 
your  own  and  others'  passions.  What  are  your  thoughts 
when  you  recall  your  own  golden  words  either  when 
sitting  in  such  company,  or  after  you  have  committed 
your  wickedness  ?  What  can  you  reply,  when  reminded 
of  your  former  conscientiousness,  in  view  of  such  a 
scandalous  life  of  deceit?  I  have,  heard  what  I  will 
not  now  repeat  from  those  who  bad  converse  with 
you  and  I  could  supply  details  and  names.  Out  upon 
your  morality  and  religion ;  out  upon  your  obstinacy 
and  bhndness !  How  have  you  sunk  from  the  pinnacle 
of  perfection  and  true  wisdom  to  the  depths  of 
depravity  and  abominable  error,  dragging  down  count- 
less numbers  with  you !  Where  now  is  Tauler,  where 
the  Theologia  Deutsch'  from  which  you  boasted  you 
had  received  so  much  light  ?  The  'Theologia'  condemns 


318  The  Facts  About  Luther 

as  utterly  wicked,  nay,  devilish  through  and  through, 
all  that  you  are  now  doing,  teaching  and  proclaiming 
in  your  books.  Glance  at  it  again  and  compare.  Alas, 
you  'theologian  of  the  Cross !'  What  you  now  have  to 
show  is  nothing  but  the  filthiest  wisdom  of  the  flesh, 
that  wisdom  which,  according  to  the  Apostle  Paul 
(Rom.  viii,  6),  is  the  death  of  the  soul  and  the  enemy 
of  God." 

The  Leipzig  University  professor  then  goes  on  to 
refer  to  the  warning  which  Luther  himself  had  given 
against  manners  of  talking  and  acting  which  tempt 
to  impurity  and  continues  as  follows :  "And  now  you 
set  aside  every  feeling  of  shame,  you  speak  and  write 
of  questionable  subjects  in  such  a  disgraceful  fashion 
that  decent  men,  whether  married  or  unmarried,  cover 
their  faces  and  fling  away  your  writings  with  execra- 
tion. In  order  to  cast  dishonor  upon  the  brides  of 
Christ  you  (in  your  writings),  so  to  speak,  lead 
unchaste  men  to  their  couches,  using  words  which  for 
very  shame  I  cannot  repeat." 

To  the  testimony  of  this  distinguished  writer  regard- 
ing Luther's  unseemly  behavior  we  might  add  that  of 
many  other  reliable  authors,  but  the  foregoing  is  repre- 
sentative of  all  who  lost  respect  for  the  man  and  who 
strongly  protested  against  his  flagrant  violations  of 
decency  in  speaking  and  treating  of  sexual  questions. 

That  he  was  consumed  by  the  fires  of  fleshly  lust  he 
admits  himself.  Even  when  engaged,  as  we  related 
in  another  place,  in  the  translation  of  the  Bible,  Luther, 
in  the  year  1521,  while  living  in  the  Wartburg,  to  which 
place  this  ''courageous  Apostle"  fled  in  the  disguise 
of  a  country  squire  and  lived  under  an  assumed 
name,  wrote  to  his  friend  Melanchthon  to  say:  "I  sit 
here  in  idleness  and  pray,  alas,  little,  and  sigh  not  for 
the  Church  of  God.  Much  more  am  I  consumed  by  the 
fires  of  my  unbridled  flesh.  In  a  word,  I,  who  should 
burn  of  the  spirit,  am  consumed  by  the  flesh  and  by 
lasciviousness."     (De  Wette,  2,  22.) 

In  the  "Table  Talk"  he  is  recorded  as  saying:  "I 
burn  with  a  thousand  flames  in  my  unsubdued  flesh: 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  319 

I  feel  myself  carried  on  with  a  rage  towards  women 
that  approaches  madness.  I,  who  ought  to  be  fervent 
in  spirit,  am  only  fervent  in  impurity." 

Luther  further  tells  that  ''while  a  Catholic,  he  passed 
his  life  in  austerities,  in  watchings,  in  fasts  and  praying, 
in  poverty,  chastity  and  obedience."  When  once 
reformed,  that  is  to  say,  another  man,  he  says  that: 
''As  it  does  not  depend  upon  him  not  to  be  a  man,  so 
neither  does  it  depend  upon  him  to  be  without  a 
woman;  and  that  he  can  no  longer  forego  the  indul- 
gence of  the  vilest  natural  propensities."  (Serm.  de 
Matrim.  fol.  119.) 

**He  was  so  well  aware  of  his  immorality,"  as  we  are 
informed  by  his  favorite  disciple,  "that  he  wished  they 
would  remove  him  from  the  office  of  preaching." 
(Sleidan,  Book  II,  1520.) 

But  the  remedies  for  all  this.  Did  he  struggle  and 
make  issue  with  temptations  ?  Did  he  rebuke  the  devil 
and  his  onslaughts,  or  did  he,  hke  one  deprived  of  the 
power  of  resistance,  allow  himself  to  become  an  easy 
prey  to  the  wiles  and  the  machinations  of  the  tempter? 
Alas,  he  tells  us  that  instead  of  being  prepared  for 
the  attacks  of  the  enemy  of  his  soul,  he  prayed  little 
in  the  hour  when  he  was  "consumed  by  the  fires  of  his 
unbridled  flesh."  How,  then,  could  he  expect  to  come 
off  victorious  in  the  unequal  and  terrible  struggle  ? 

Lutherans  often  relate  how  when  their  hero  was  at- 
tacked by  the  devil  he  hurled  an  inkstand  at  the  arch 
enemy.  This  w^as  an  ingenious  method  of  defense, 
but  something  more  effectual  was  urgently  required  in 
the  unpleasant  circumstances.  The  ordinary  useful 
and  consecrated  means  for  repelling  Satan's  onslaughts, 
such  as  prayer,  penance  and  the  use  of  the  sacraments, 
were  not,  however,  agreeable  to  Luther's  tastes.  Fancy- 
ing hfmself  to  be  a  wonderful  physician  of  souls,  he, 
in  his  resourcefulness,  conceived  new  means  and  new 
methods  which  he  thought  would  surely  be  helpful  in 
the  uncomfortable  and  dangerous  meetings  with  his 
Satanic  Majesty.  What,  think  you,  are  they?  Does 
he  prescribe  prayer,  fasting,  and  the  crucifixion  of  the 


320  The  Facts  About  Luther 

flesh  for  the  mastering  of  passion  and  the  overthrow 
of  the  enemy  of  salvation  as  the  Master  ever  enjoined? 
No.  His  ways  are  not  the  ways  of  the  Lord.  "They 
are  fools/'  he  says,  "who  attempt  to  overcome  tempta- 
tions by  fasting,  prayer,  and  chastisement.  For  such 
temptations  and  immoral  attacks  are  easily  overcome 
when  there  are  plenty  of  maidens  and  women." 

How  now  can  any  one  believe  the  exponent  of  such 
teaching  to  be  an  inspired  man  of  God?  Is  it  not 
horrible  to  think  that  any  one  in  his  senses  could  give 
utterance  to  such  unbecoming  language  and  prescribe 
such  indecent  methods  for  the  overthrow  of  unruly 
passion?  Did  the  corruption  of  his  mind,  as  is  plainly 
evidenced  in  his  speech,  induce  to  laxity  of  behavior 
and  lead  him  to  exemplify  his  teaching  in  grave  moral 
delinquencies  ?  Corrupt  teaching  begets  corrupt  action, 
and  hence  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  any  one  holding 
such  principles  and  "consumed  by  the  fires  of  his  un- 
bridled flesh"  could  wholly  escape  in  his  own  case  the 
exemplification  of  his  unhallowed  pronouncements.  But 
whether  or  not  he  used  his  own  avowed  remedies  in 
temptations  to  lewdness,  of  one  thing  we  are  certain, 
namely,  that  his  conduct  after  he  left  the  Church  was 
often  open  to  just  criticism.  By  his  own  admission 
he  made  no  scruple  of  drinking  deeply  in  order  to 
drive  away  temptations  and  melancholy,  and  whilst 
his  enemies  may  have  gone  too  far  in  charging  him 
with  gross  immorality,  there  is,  however,  much  in  this 
direction  which  cannot  be  ignored  or  excused.  His 
ghastly  utterances,  his  bubbling  over  with  obscenity, 
his  boiling  spring  of  sensuality  were  known  to  all,  and 
it  could  not  be  wondered  at  if  men  thought  that  these 
defects  could  only  be  explained  and  partially  defended 
on  the  ground  of  an  abnormal  sexual  condition  which 
was  supposed  to  have  been  heightened  by  licentious 
irregularities. 

In  the  "Analecta  Lutherana"  by  Theodore  Kolde, 
there  is  a  medical  letter  of  Wolfgang  Rychardus  to 
Johann  Magenbuch,  Luther's  physician,  dated  June 
II,   1523,  taken   from  the  Hamburg  Town   Library, 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  3S1 

which  is  of  a  character  to  make  one  wonder  on  reading 
it  whether  Luther  did  not  at  one  period  suffer  from 
syphiHs,  at  any  rate  in  a  mild  form.  On  this  deHcate 
matter  any  one  may,  if  further  information  be  desired, 
read  Grisar,  Vol.  II,  pp.  162,  3,  4,  where  all  the  details 
of  the  question  are  carefully  and  learnedly  discussed. 

With  Luther's  nasty  writings  and  sayings  at  hand, 
coupled  with  the  accusations  of  his  friends  and  inti- 
mates regarding  the  looseness  of  his  behavior,  it  is 
sheer  recklessness  and  consummate  audacity  to  hold 
him  up  to  public  gaze  as  a  teacher  and  model  of 
morality.  His  admirers  may  canonize  him  as  the  fore- 
runner of  revolution,  as  the  apostle  of  socialism,  as 
the  liberator  of  human  thought,  but  the  insult  is  too 
great,  and  the  deception  too  easily  discovered,  when 
once  the  ''Reformer"  is  spoken  of  in  connection  with 
morality. 

Many  a  time  and  oft  when  Luther  was  in  the  monas- 
tery he  heard  the  inspired  words,  *'Make  your  bodies 
a  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost."  That  is  the  great  aim 
of  the  Christian  religion.  Christianity  met  paganism 
full  of  corruption  and  of  impurity ;  it  came  to  conquer 
immorality  by  spirituality.  It  alone  inculcated  the  idea 
that  the  greatness  of  man  must  consist  in  becoming 
master  of  his  passions,  and  of  his  animal  nature.  It 
ever  insisted  that  even  the  flesh  must  be  sanctified. 
This  idea  took  hold  of  the  minds  of  men  and  was  so 
deeply  rooted  that  on  all  sides  the  Orders  of  those 
who  by  vows  practised  chastity  and  perpetual  virginity 
began  to  multiply.  This  thought  of  chastity,  both  in 
the  single  and  married  life,  the  Church  impressed  upon 
all  of  her  children  in  all  generations.  Around  the 
nuptial  chamber,  she  placed  the  sacrament  of  matri- 
mony as  a  sentinel  and,  upon  the  bosom,  of  the  virgin, 
she  placed  the  laurel  of  her  loving  approval  and 
motherly  benediction.  Woman  was  elevated  and  became 
the  true  companion  of  her  husband,  the  educator  of 
her  children ;  and  the  maiden,  the  virgin,  became  the 
cherished  object  of  knightly  courage  and  protection. 
Chastitv'  was  the  motto  written  across  the  Christian 


322  The  Facts  About  Luther 

horizon  and  engraved  on  the  shield  of  the  chevaher. 

To  change  all  this,  to  deify  indecency,  decry  celibacy 
and  virginity  and  dishonor  the  married  state,  was 
Luther's  Satanic  desire  and  diabolical  purpose.  The 
evil  effects  of  his  destructive  work  have  cursed  the 
world  during  the  past  four  hundred  years  and,  even 
in  our  own  day,  we  find  it  has  penetrated  our  homes 
to  work  havoc  there  through  the  divorce  mill*  and  to 
tell  men  they  are  powerless  in  the  midst  of  the  allure- 
ments of  life  to  resist  animal  proclivities.  For  many 
to-day,  chastity  in  the  single  and  married  state  is 
purely  a  matter  of  law,  a  matter  of  social  etiquette, 
an  external  thing,  something  which  is  decried  as  an 
impossibility  and  as  an  encroachment  upon  natural 
demands. 

Luther,  horrible  to  relate,  with  the  gospel  in  his 
hand,  taught  his  disciples,  male  and  female,  in  the 
world  and  in  the  cloisters,  that  no  man  or  woman 
could  be  chaste  in  primitive,  much  less  in  fallen  nature. 
"Chastity  or  continence,"  said  this  vile  man,  "was 
physically  impossible.''  In  the  most  brutal  frankness, 
he  writes  without  a  blush  the  following  lines  to  a 
number  of  religious  women :  'Though,"  he  says,  *'the 
women  folk  are  ashamed  to  confess  it,  yet  it  is  proved 
by  Scripture  and  experience,  that  there  is  not  one 
among  many  thousands,  to  whom  God  gives  grace  to 
keep  entirely  chaste.  A  woman  has  no  power  over 
herself.  God  created  her  body  for  man  and  to  bear 
offspring.  This  clearly  appears  from  the  testimony  of 
Moses  i,  28,  and  from  the  design  of  God  in  the  con- 


*A  few  facts  will  show  to  what  an  extent  the  loathsome  leprosy  of 
divorce  has  spread  in  our  country  alone.  The  total  number  of  divorces 
granted  in  1867  was  21  per  100,000  of  the  population.  Forty  years 
later,  in  1906,  there  were  86  per  100,000;  thus,  allowing  for  the  increased 
ronulation,  divorce  had  increased  319%.  In  1887  there  was  one  divorce 
for  every  seventeen  marriages;  in  1906  one  for  every  twelve  marriages, 
and  at  the  same  rate  we  will  have  in  1946  the  appalling  numt)er  of  one 
divorce  for  every  five  marriages. 

Durin?  1901  there  were  twice  as  many  divorces  granted  among 
75,000.000  Americans  in  the  United  States  as  among  the  400,000,000 
souls  of  Europe  and  other  Chri-tian  Coniiviritie-.  During  the  twenty  years 
ended  with  1906.  Ireland  had  only  nineteen  divorces,  or  an  average  of 
less  than  one  absolute  divorce  per  year  for  her  entire  population  of 
4,500,000. 

No  loyal  American  and  true  Christian  can  view  the  divorce  evil  in 
our  country  with  other  than  feelings  of  the  gravest  alarm. 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  323 

struction  of  her  creation."  "The  gratification  of  sexual 
desire  was  nature's  work,  God's  work,"  as  he  cynically 
calls  it,  *'and,  as  necessary,  aye,  much  more  so  than 
eating,  drinking,  digesting,  sweating,  sleeping,"  etc. 
(De  Wette  II,  535.)  We  dare  not  repeat  all  he 
enumerates  in  his  filthy  catalogue.  "Hence,"  said  he, 
*'to  vow  or  promise  to  restrain  this  natural  propensity, 
is  the  same  as  to  vow  or  promise  that  one  will  have 
wings  and  fly  and  be  an  angel  and  morally  worth  about 
as  much  as  if  one  was  to  promise  God  that  he  would 
commit  adultery." 

The  way  in  which  this  "glorious  evangehst"  explains 
his  beastly  theories  in  his  coarse  Latin  and  in  his  still 
coarser  German,  is  such  that  it  cannot  be  given  here, 
"so  full  is  it,"  to  adopt  Hallam's  mild  language,  "not 
only  of  indelicacy  but  of  gross  filthiness."  No  defense 
can  be  set  up  for  the  indecencies  of  his  expression 
which  no  Christian  ear  could  listen  to.  He  had  the 
advantage  of  a  monastic  training  which  should  have 
had  a  refining  influence  over  his  whole  life  and,  no 
matter  what  hatred  he  bore  the  Church  and  her  teach- 
ings, he  should  not  have  forgotten  that  his  speech 
should  be  that  of  a  gentleman  and  not  that  of  a  denizen 
of  the  underworld.  The  pity  is  that  cudgel  or  other 
weapon  was  not  lifted  in  threat  against  the  theological 
pretender  who  taught,  in  virtue  of  his  new  gospel,  that 
all  women,  Catholic  or  Protestant,  outside  those  that 
contracted  marriage,  are  necessarily  unclean  and 
impure.  If  Protestants  hearing  Luther's  language  can 
keep  cool  and  restrain  their  indignation,  it  only  shows 
how  far  religious  bigotry  can  control  all  natural 
impulses  of  decency  and  honor. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  world,  men  were  taught 
to  place  a  high  value  on  personal  purity  and  were 
directed  to  present  their  bodies  a  living  sacrifice,  holy, 
pleasing  unto  the  Lord.  This  lesson  was  thoroughly 
impressed  upon  society ;  and  the  holy  of  all  times,  even 
the  virtuous  sages  of  paganism  and  the  professional 
votaries  of  false  gods,  believed  that  continence  was 
not  only  possible,  but  acceptable  to  the  Deity.     The 


324  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Incarnation  of  God  and  of  a  God  conceived  and  born 
of  a  spotless  Virgin,  elevated  the  holy  teaching  to  a 
still  higher  degree  and  the  sacred  lives  of  Jesus  and 
Mary,  becoming  the  ideals  of  Christian  behavior, 
caused  religion  to  open  up  peaceful  retreats  the  world 
over  for  generous  souls,  free  agents,  followers  of 
evangelical  counsels,  to  give  strongest  expression 
thereto  for  the  sake  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  and 
of  love  of  virginal  continence.  Enchanted  by  the 
example  of  the  Saviour,  men  and  women  wished  and 
strove  to  be  as  He  was  and,  as  a  direct  consequence, 
Christian  celibacy  and  virginity  blessed  the  world  to 
teach  it  to  rise  triumphant  over  the  passions  of  the 
human  heart.  When  one  is  convinced  that  there  is 
nothing  here  below  really  worthy  of  lasting  regard, 
who  has  a  right  to  prevent  him  from  vowing  to  make 
God  the  eternal  object  of  his  love  and  affection? 

Luther  knew  full  well  the  especial  esteem  the  Church 
always  entertained  for  celibacy,  for  virgin  souls  and 
for  the  state  of  consecrated  continence.  Sympathizing 
with  this  spirit  of  Holy  Mother  Church,  he  himself 
went  forth  from  kindred  and  father's  house,  from  the 
surroundings  and  sweet  ties  of  family  affection,  from 
the  innocent  inducements  that  open  out  before  a  young 
heart,  to  consecrate  his  life  in  holy  chastity  and  to 
dedicate  it  to  the  service  of  Him  who  is  alone  without 
blemish.  Then  he  did  not  express  himself  openly  and 
declare  chastity  was  impossible  and  a  mere  delusion, 
that  licentiousness  was  permissible  and  natural,  and 
that  the  gratification  of  the  flesh  was  the  aim  of  man. 
Far  from  it.  On  many  occasions  before  his  break  with 
the  Church,  we  find  him,  as  some  of  his  Protestant 
supporters  will  be  surprised  to  learn,  extolling  the 
religious  calling  and  declaring  it  "as  more  pleasing  in 
the  sight  of  God  than  the  marriage  state  .  .  .  better 
on  earth  as  having  less  care  and  trouble  not  in  itself, 
but  because  a  man  can  give  himself  to  preaching  and 
the  Word  of  God  .  .  .  whosoever  wishes  to  serve  the 
Churches  .  .  .  would  do  well  to  remain  without  a 
wife."    In  this  Luther  was  right.     He  was  in  accord 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  325 

with  a  conviction  common  to  men  of  all  times,  of  all 
places  and  of  all  religions,  that  there  is  a  manifest 
incompatibility  of  the  priestly  office  with  sexual  rela- 
tions with  women  even  in  the  bonds  of  marriage.  He 
understood  the  Church's  wisdom  in  not  allowing  her 
priests  to  marry,  as  is  apparent  from  the  fact  that  a 
wedded  clergy  must  necessarily  be  separated  from  the 
queen  of  virtues  and  the  mother  of  great  self-devotion, 
charity,  profound  study  and  all  that  wins  favor  from 
God  and  man.  Hampered  by  the  ties  of  family  and  the 
cares  of  wife  and  children,  how  could  the  ambassadors 
of  Christ  ever  fulfill  the  sublime  commission  entrusted 
to  them  by  the  great  Eternal  Priest  who  said :  *'Go, 
teach  all  nations  under  the  sun  ?"  How  could  they  as 
St.  Paul  says,  "think  of  the  things  of  God,"  be  free 
to  devote  themselves  entirely  to  Plis  service  and  afford 
example  to  the  people  unless  they  led  celibate  lives? 

In  spite,  however,  of  all  earlier  pronouncements  on 
voluntary  chastity  for  Christ's  sake,  "Luther  at 
bottom,"  as  Father  Johnston  remarks,  "hated  the  very 
idea  of  virginity.  The  reason  that  he  extols  it  at  times 
was  because  he  could  not  explain  Paul's  plain  praise 
of  the  same  in  first  Corinthians.  Fundamentally  he 
was  driven  to  depreciate  it  most  of  the  time  and  to 
conceive  a  positive  diabolical  hatred  of  celibacy,  in 
particular:  driven  to  disparage  virginity  by  his  strange 
pessimistic  theory  of  the  hopeless  depravity  of  man  and 
lack  of  freedom  of  the  will;  driven  to  hate  celibacy 
because  of  its  connection  with  his  own  one  time  and 
hated  priesthood  and  possibly  because  of  the  gibes  of 
his  Catholic  opponents  at  his  haste  to  wed." 

Luther  in  his  heart  of  hearts  had  a  low  conception 
of  male  and  female  virtue  and  did  not  believe  chastity 
outside  of  wedlock  possible,  except  in  such  rare  cases 
as  amount  to  a  miracle  of  Divine  interposition.  "Chas- 
tity," he  says,  "is  as  little  within  our  power  as  the 
working  of  miracles.  He  who  resolves  to  remain  single 
should  give  up  his  title  to  be  a  human  being  and  prove 
that  he  is  either  an  angel  or  a  spirit."  "As  little  as  we 
can  do  without  eating  and  drinking,  so  it  is  impossible 


326  The  Facts  About  Luther 

to  do  without  women."  "The  reason  is  that  we  have 
been  conceived  and  nourished  in  a  woman's  womb,  that 
from  woman  we  were  born  and  begotten ;  hence  our 
flesh  is  for  the  most  part  woman's  flesh  and  it  is 
impossible  to  abstain  from  it."     (Tischr.  2,  s.  20  S. 

We  omit  out  of  decency  to  quote  more  of  Luther's 
vile  utterances  on  this  delicate  subject.  The  thoughts 
that  filled  his  depraved  mind  and  reflected  on  the 
greater  part  of  mankind  led  him  on  after  his  excom- 
munication to  strive  vvith  diabolical  energy  to  eradicate 
from  the  people's  hearts  the  love  for  and  beHef  in  the 
possibility  of  chastity  outside  of  wedlock.  He  now 
sets  himself  up  very  distinctly  against  the  supernatural 
counsel,  which  the  Master  proposed  to  those  who 
"will  to  be  perfect"  and  who  with  largeness  of  heart, 
are  "able  to  contain  it."  He  knew  that  Christ  sur- 
rounded himself  with  virgins.  He  knew  that  His 
forerunner,  St.  John  the  Baptist,  was  a  virgin;  His 
foster  father  St.  Joseph  was  a  virgin;  His  mother 
Mary  was  a  virgin;  all  of  His  Apostles,  except  St. 
Peter,  were  virgins,  who  had  "left  all  things  to  follow 
Him,  and  it  is  a  tradition  of  the  Church  that  St.  Peter 
too  observed  continency  from  the  time  that  he  obeyed 
the  call  of  the  Lord  to  be  "a  fisher  of  men."  He  knew 
that  St.  Paul,  too,  was  a  virgin.  He  knew  that  from 
the  apostolic  times  onward  the  conviction  grew  in  the 
Church  that  men  who  exercised  Christ's  oflice  and 
priesthood  at  the  altar  and  handled  His  Sacred  Body 
thereon  were  called  on  to  practise  the  highest  form 
of  chastity  and  to  consecrate  their  virginity  to  God  of 
their  own  accord,  confident  in  Divine  help  for  the  ful- 
fillment of  the  requirements  of  their  holy  and  exacting 
calling.  Luther  knew  all  this  and  yet,  in  the  perversity 
of  his  will  and  in  spite  of  his  better  judgment,  he 
deliberately  closed  his  eyes  to  the  facts,  hardened  his 
heart  and  resisted  the  counsels  of  the  Lord. 

Christ,  speaking  of  virginity,  not  by  way  of  command, 
but  by  way  of  counsel,  said,  "he  that  can  take  it  let 
him  take  it"  and  that  His  grace  will  be  all-sufficient  to 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  327 

overcome  the  infirmity  of  nature.  Luther  in  unbounded 
blasphemy  contradicts  this  Divine  utterance.  He  will 
no  longer  acknowledge  such  preaching.  He,  the  doctor 
of  doctors,  considers  it  all  folly  and  declares  most 
emphatically  that  ''it  is  impossible  for  any  one  to  live 
single  and  be  continent."  To  his  distorted  mind,  the 
vow  of  chastity  was  an  "impossible  vow,"  "an  abomina- 
tion" and  "worse  than  adultery."  In  his  desire  to 
abolish  and  get  rid  of  it,  he  is  not  ashamed  to  appeal 
"to  priests,  monks  and  nuns,  who  find  themselves 
capable  of  generation,"  to  violate  their  sworn  promises 
and  abandon  their  freely  chosen  state  of  celibacy. 
Unless  they  follow  his  advice,  he  considers  nothing 
remains  for  them  but  "to  pass  their  days  in  inevitable 
self-gratification.''  "Parents,"  he  said,  "should  be 
dissuaded  from  counselling  their  children  to  adopt 
the  religious  state  as  they  were  surely  making  an  oflfer- 
ing  of  them  to  the  devil."  Thus  with  shameless 
effrontery,  he  declaimed  like  a  maniac  against  religious 
vows  and,  so  bitterly  antagonistic  was  he,  that  he  went 
so  far  as  to  declare  "that  the  day  has  come  not  only 
to  abolish  forever  those  unnatural  vows,  but  to  punish, 
with  all  the  rigor  of  the  law,  such  as  make  them;  to 
destroy  convents,  abbeys,  priories  and  monasteries  and 
in  this  way  prevent  their  ever  being  uttered."  (See 
Wittenb.  2,  304  B.)  To  all  this,  every  libertine  from 
Luther's  day  down  to  the  present,  would  respond  with 
a  hearty  "Amen."  Not  so,  however,  the  clean  of  heart, 
who  appreciate  the  invaluable  services  that  the  Relig- 
ious, male  and  female,  have  rendered  the  world  in  all 
ages  and  climes  in  every  department  of  life. 

The  great  exemplar  of  virginity  was  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  The  dissolute  nailed  Him  to  the  cross.  Ever 
since  persecution  has  been  the  lot  of  the  clean  of  heart. 
Luther  and  his  followers  had  not  the  courage  to  con- 
tinue to  make  sacrifices,  conquer  their  passions  and 
bring  their  unruly  bodies  into  subjection  to  Divine 
law  and  heavenly  grace  and,  imagining  others  to  be  as 
weak,  depraved  and  cowardly  as  themselves — no 
longer  men  enough  to  bear  their  self-imposed  yoke  of 


338  The  Facts  About  Luther 

chastity  —  they  even  charged  with  a  horrible  hypocrisy 
the  imitators  of  the  virginity  of  Christ,  whose  glorious 
history  is  in  veneration  among  the  pure  of  heart  the 
world  over.  In  refusing  to  believe  in  the  possibility  of 
virtue  and  self-control  and  in  persecuting  the  aspirants 
after  perfection,  they  only  prove  to  the  disgust  of  the 
decent  of  all  times  that  they  have  reached  the  lowest 
limits  of  brutality. 

Luther,  however,  had  a  remedy  for  all  the  abomina- 
tions he  conjured  up  in  his  filthy  mind  against  celibacy 
and  virginity.  In  a  most  disgusting  sermon,  which 
he  should  have  been  ashamed  to  preach  at  Witten- 
berg in  1522,  he  advanced  in  the  crudest  and  most 
shocking  manner  his  conviction  that  matrimony  is 
obligatory  on  every  individual.  "Chastity,"  he  says, 
"is  an  abomination."  ''ReHgious  vows  are  impossible 
to  keep"  and  **he  who  desires  to  remain  single  under- 
takes an  impossible  struggle."  The  gracious  ways  of 
Providence  and  the  free  choice  of  individuals  to 
determine  their  state  of  life  are  as  nothing  to  the 
Founder  of  Lutheranism,  who  nov/  decrees  matrimony 
for  all  as  the  only  remedy  against  the  violence  of 
corrupt  and  unruly  passion.  The  words  of  God, 
"increase  and  multiply,"  found  in  Genesis  i,  28,  he 
thought,  "are  not  simply  a  precept  but  much  more  than 
a  precept;  they  enjoin  a  Divine  work  which  is  just  as 
necessary  as  eating,  drinking,  digesting,  sweating, 
sleeping,  etc."  After  alluding  to  the  words  of  Christ 
recorded  in  Matthew  xix,  12,  "and  there  are  eunuchs 
who  have  made  themselves  eunuchs  for  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,"  he  says :  "He  that  does  not  find  himself 
in  any  of  the  classes  referred  to  ought  to  think  of 
matrimony  forthwith  ...  If  not,  you  cannot  possibly 
remain  chaste  .  .  .  you  cannot  withdraw  yourself 
from  that  word  of  God,  'increase  and  multiply,'  if  you 
will  not  necessarily  and  continually  commit  the  most 
horrible  crimes."  (Wittenb.  Vol.  V.  119  B.)  In  a 
letter  written  to  Reissenbusch  he  repeats  his  claim, 
"that  chastity  is  as  little  within  the  power  of  man  as 
are  other  miracles  and  favors  of  God."    Then  he  asks 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  329 

his  friend,  "Why  do  you  hesitate  and  trouble  yourself 
so  much  with  serious  reflections  ?  It  must  and  shall 
and  will  be  ever  thus  and  things  will  not  be  different. 
Put  such  thoughts  out  of  your  mind  and  behave 
courageously  by  entering  into  wedlock.  Your  body 
demands  and  requires  it;  God  wills  it  and  urges  you 
to  it.  How  will  you  get  over  this  ?  .  .  .  Every  day  we 
see  how  difficult  it  is  to  observe  conjugal  chastity  in 
matrimony  and  should  we,  outside  of  that  state,  resolve 
on  chastity,  as  if  we  were  not  human  beings  and  pos- 
sessed neither  flesh  nor  blood?"  (De  Wette  II,  637 
seqq.) 

The  motives  which  Luther  urged  to  induce  all  to 
enter  wealock  were  evidently  far  from  being  in  accord 
with  those  which  the  Almighty  intended  in  the  conse- 
cration of  the  union  of  both  sexes.  But  as  he  held 
matrimony  to  be  a  worldly  thing,  denied  its  sacramental 
character  and  refused  to  acknowledge  it  to  be  a  type  of 
that  great  sacrament,  which  is  between  Christ  and  His 
Church,  we  need  not  be  astonished  that  he  urges  an 
additional  motive  to  those  already  advanced  for  main- 
taining the  obligation  of  marriage.  Here  it  is,  genuinely 
stamped  with  the  usual  Lutheran  brand  and  bearing 
the  marks  of  the  Reformer's  abiding  hatred  against  the 
Pope.  To  the  single,  he  now  cries  out :  "Though  one 
may  have  the  gift  to  live  chastely  without  a  wife,  yet 
one  ought  to  marry  to  spite  the  Pope  who  insists  on 
celibacy  and  forbids  the  clergy  to  marry."  (Tischr.  II, 
c.  20  S.  3.)  Marry  and  spite  the  Pope.  Do  not  mind 
whether  you  are  called  or  not  called  to  the  married 
state.  Rush  into  it.  Do  not  weigh  the  consequences. 
The  Pope  insists  on  safe-guarding  one  of  the  evan- 
gelical counsels  and  he  must  not  be  suflfered  to  do  so 
longer.  The  way  to  weaken  his  influence  and  destroy 
his  holy  work  is  for  all  to  marry.  The  motive  was 
truly  ingenious  and  in  every  way  worthy  of  the 
inventive  powers  of  the  reformer.  Needless  to  say, 
the  strange  advice  was  not  generally  heeded,  for  then 
and  now  most  men  have  other  and  higher  reasons  than 
spiting  the  Pope  for  their  entrance  into  married  Ufe. 


330  The  Facts  About  LuT:ii:ii 

Luther,  notwithstanding  the  evident  folly  and 
weakness  of  his  advice,  still  kept  harping  on  the  Pope. 
In  spitefulness  and  in  hatred  of  celibacy,  he  is  now 
carried  beyond  himself  and  urges  the  violation  of  the 
laws  of  the  Church  which  are  framed  for  the  safe- 
guarding of  marriage  in  the  general  councils  of 
Christendom.  "To  understand  his  course  the  better," 
Fr.  Johnston  reminds  us,  "we  should  know  that  there 
were  many  secretly  in  favor  of  his  new  doctrines,  but 
bound  to  clerical  celibacy,  such  as  priests,  nuns,  and 
the  Knights  of  the  Teutonic  Order.  That  these  should 
have  followed  Luther's  example  and  repudiated  their 
vows  and  married  openly,  was  comprehensible  and 
from  their  standpoint  not  at  all  surprising.  But  that 
is  not  what  many  of  them  did.  Instead  they  were 
keeping  concubines  or  at  least  were  secretly  marrying 
in  a  way  that  legally  amounted  to  the  same."  Now 
what  is  the  advice  that  Luther  gave  such  offenders? 
He  tells  them  to  contract  such  secret  marriages  and 
counselled  certain  parish  priests  living  under  the  juris- 
diction of  Duke  George  or  the  bishops  to  "marry  their 
cook  secretly."  In  a  letter  addressed  to  the  Lords  of 
the  Teutonic  Order  dated  March  28,  1523,  Luther 
writes  as  follows:  "Again  I  say  that  if  it  should 
happen  that  one,  two,  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  and 
more  Councils  should  decree  that  a  priest  should  v/ed 
or  do  anything  else  that  the  Word  of  God  commands 
or  forbids,  then  I  would  expect  God's  mercy  and  much 
more  for  him  who  kept  one  or  two  or  three  females 
all  his  life  than  for  him  who  weds  a  wife  in  accordance 
with  such  a  decree.  Yea,  I  would  command  in  the 
name  of  God  and  advise  that  no  one  should  wed 
according  to  such  a  decree  upon  the  penalty  of  the 
loss  of  his  soul,  but  that  he  should  live  in  celibacy  and, 
if  this  is  not  possible,  that  he  may  rely  on  God's 
mercy  and  not  despair  in  his  weakness  and  sinfulness." 
(Wittenb.  6,  244).  A  little  further  on  he  repeats  that 
"one  who  keeps  a  female  commits  less  sin  and  is  nearer 
to  God's  grace  than  a  man  who  would  take  a  wife  by 
permission  of  a  Council." 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  331 

As  we  read  the  disgusting  words  addressed  to  the 
nobility  of  the  Teutonic  Order  approving  and  coun- 
selling concubinage  and  secret  immorality,  we  are 
amazed  beyond  the  power  of  expression  and  the  blush 
of  shame  rises  to  our  cheeks.  The  fact  that  Luther 
counselled  such  secret  illicit  unions  in  defiance  of 
ecclesiastical  and  civil  law  and  considered  them  holier 
than  those  that  honorably  and  openly  complied  with 
the  regulations  of  the  General  Councils  of  Christendom, 
makes  his  advice  and  recommendation  all  the  more 
abhorrent  and  detestable.  His  apologists  may  try  to 
explain  away  his  advocacy  of  concubinage,  but  his 
filthy  words  remain  to  confront  them  at  every  turn 
and  to  tell  the  world  that  in  base  wantonness  and 
horrible  blasphemy  they  have  never  been  equalled  or 
surpassed  by  the  most  depraved  of  mortals.  It  is 
only  preachers  and  writers  like  himself,  men  lost  to 
all  appreciation  of  marital  propriety,  who  attempt  to 
excuse  the  brazen  manifestation  of  their  master's  cor- 
ruption of  moral  sense  and  dare  call  this  advocate 
of  concubinage  and  illicit  matrimonial  unions  "a 
reformer"  and  a  "servant  of  the  Lord."  Men  of  sense, 
men  who  take  Luther's  words  as  they  read  and  consider 
the  filth,  obscenity,  moral  corruption  and  infidelity  that 
constantly  fill  his  pronouncements  on  the  holy  state 
of  single  and  married  life,  are  not  deceived.  The 
evidences  of  his  depravity  are  so  overwhelming  and 
convincing  that  they  are  forced  to  the  conclusion  that 
this  shameless  advocate  of  brazen  prostitution  could 
not  be  and  was  not  "a  messenger  of  the  all  Holy  God." 
To  the  clean  of  heart  the  idea  is  preposterous.  As 
one  thinks  of  this  man's  eflforts  to  degrade  human 
nature,  it  makes  him  feel  almost  ashamed  to  belong 
to  the  same  human  family. 

It  is  an  awkward  thing  for  a  man  without  credentials 
to  charge  himself  with  the  public  conscience  and  to 
assume  the  position  of  an  evangelist  without  discharg- 
ing the  high  obligations  inseparably  attached  thereto. 
Luther  was  very  proud  of  the  pretended  light  which 
he  thought  he  was  spreading  through  his  novel  and 


332  The  Facts  About  Luther 

immoral  teachings.  He  delighted  to  tell  his  admirers 
how  through  his  efforts  religion  had  been  made  acces- 
sible to  all.  Before  his  time,  he  said :  ''Nobody  knew 
Christ  .  .  .  nobody  knew  anything  that  a  Christian 
ought  to  be  familiar  with.  The  Pope-asses  obscured 
and  suppressed  all  knowledge  of  heavenly  things.** 
They  were  nothing  short  of  "asses,  big,  rude,  ignorant 
asses"  and  especially  in  all  matters  pertaining  to  Chris- 
tianity. "But  now,"  he  continues,  "thanks  to  God, 
men  and  women  know  the  catechism,  they  know  how 
to  live,  to  believe,  to  pray,  to  suffer  and  to  die." 
(Walch  XVI.  2013.) 

This  was  a  proud  boast  of  Luther  and  well  might 
he  feel  elated  did  the  wonderful  change  he  conjured 
up  in  his  vivid  imagination  actually  come  about.  Of 
enlightenment,  as  conceived  by  him,  there  was  a  plenty. 
It  was  not,  however,  the  enlightenment  which  the 
"Pope-asses,"  as  he  calls  the  Vicars  of  Christ's  Church, 
had  furnished  the  world  for  its  uplift  and  sanctifica- 
tion.  They,  in  their  long  rule  of  the  Church  of  God, 
were  never  so  unmindful  of  their  sacred  mission  and 
the  high  obligations  attached  thereto,  as  to  proclaim 
that  the  Decalogue  had  no  longer  any  binding  force, 
that  vows  made  to  God  might  be  disregarded,  and 
that  fornication,  divorce  and  concubinage  were  permis- 
sible to  every  blackguard  who  violated  the  sacred 
relations  of  the  married  state.  If  an  opprobrious  name 
were  in  order  and,  if  it  were  permissible  to  confer 
such  on  one  who  earned  it  as  well  as  Luther  did, 
then  it  is  not  the  Pope,  but  himself  he  should  have 
called  an  "ass,"  for  it  was  his  braying  that  announced 
to  men  and  women  the  new  enlightenment  in  the  in- 
decencies and  gratifications  of  animal  passions  that 
degraded  humanity,  offended  Christian  sensibilities 
and  ruined  souls  for  time  and  eternity. 

But,  it  is  time  to  get  acquainted  with  a  little  more 
of  the  special  kind  of  "enlig'^tenment"  Luther  fur- 
nished the  world  and  of  which  it  was  ignorant  until 
"his  blessed  gospel"  announced  it  for  the  delectation 
of  the  lawless  and  the  dissolute  in  society.     In  the 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  833 

''Babylonian  Captivity,"  wl.ich  was  issued  in  1521,  he 
denied  the  sacramental  character  of  matrimony,  and 
thereafter,  especially  in  a  filthy  sermon,  delivered 
at  Wittenberg  in  1522,  for  which  he  should  have  been 
stoned  out  of  the  pulpit,  he  gave  utterance  to  senti- 
ments which  did  not  contribute  to  raise  wedded  life 
in  public  esteem.  His  aim  seemed  to  be  to  destroy 
the  sanctity  of  marriage  and  thereby  work  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  social  order  organized  by  GoJ,  whose 
corner-stone  is  the  family.  Religion,  civil  order, 
manhood  and  womanhood  are  there  matured  and 
fostered  and  protected  and  started  upon  the  way  of 
duty  and  civilization.  If  the  wells  are  poisoned,  disease 
will  spread  everywhere ;  if  the  home  is  defiled  the 
whole  of  Hfe  is  profaned  and  corrupted ;  if  the  sacred 
bonds  of  the  home  and  the  ties  of  the  family  are 
weakened,  the  demons  are  unchained  and  let  loose  upon 
humanity.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  Catholic  Church 
with  diligence  and  perseverance  watched  over  the 
holy  state  of  m.atrimony,  which  Christ  elevated  to 
the  dignity  of  a  sacrament,  making  it  a  union  never 
to  be  dissolved.  "For  better  for  worse  till  death  do 
us  part,"  was  the  motto  of  Christendom.  But  Luther 
steps  forward,  with  "his  evangel"  in  hand,  and  both 
in  theory  and  practice  condemns  the  Divine  command- 
ment :  "Let  every  man  have  his  own  wife  and  let  every 
woman  have  her  own  husband."  He  proclaims  instead 
the  permissibility  of  bigamy  and  of  the  system  of 
polygamy  on  the  installment  plan  through  divorce,  a 
system  which  naturally  opened  the  flood-gates  of 
sensuality  and  threatened  the  very  existence  of  society. 
According  to  his  new  teaching  any  man  who  is  tired 
of  his  wife  can  leave  her  for  any  reason  whatsoever 
and,  forthwith,  the  marriage  is  dissolved  and  both 
free  to  marr}^  again.  "The  husband  may  drive  away 
his  wife;  God  cares  not.  Let  Vashti  go  and  take  an 
Esther,  as  did  the  king  Ahasuerus."  Does  not  such 
a  permission  open  the  gates  to  successive  polygamy, 
free  love  and  legalized  prostitution? 

Luther  had  a  close  friend  by  the  name  of  Carlstadt, 


334  The  Facts  About  Luther 

who  left  the  Church  of  his  fathers  and  became  a 
disciple  of  the  new  gospel  of  freedom.  Just  to  show 
practically  how  he  had  absorbed  the  new  teaching  of 
license  inculcated  by  the  prophet  of  Wittenberg,  he 
broke  his  priestly  vows  and  became  the  husband  of 
two  wives.  Bruck,  the  Chancellor  of  the  Duke  of 
Saxe-Weimar,  in  1524,  consulted  Luther  on  the 
scandalous  incident.  The  Reformer,  not  in  the  least 
abashed,  openly  and  distinctly  stated :  *T  confess  that 
I  cannot  forbid  a  person  to  marry  several  wives,  for 
it  does  not  contradict  the  Scripture.  If  a  man  wishes 
to  marry  more  than  one  wife  he  should  be  asked 
Vv^hether  he  is  satisfied  in  his  conscience  that  he  may 
do  so  in  accordance  v/ith  the  word  of  God.  In  such 
a  case  the  civil  authority  has  nothing  to  do  in  the 
matter."  (De  Wette,  second  edition,  459.)  Many 
other  clear  statements  wherein  Luther  sanctions  polyg- 
amy might  be  reproduced  here,  but  the  one  given 
above  v/ill  suffice  for  the  present. 

It  is  certain  that  Luther  not  only  advocated  the 
vile  teaching  of  polygamy,  but,  that  he  also  sanctioned 
it  in  specific  cases,  notably  that  of  the  Landgrave 
Philip  of  Hesse.  This  potentate  was  one  of  the  m.ost 
licentious  men  of  his  day  and  in  consequence  of  his 
excesses  suflfered  from  a  violent  secret  malady.  In 
a  petition  addressed  to  Luther,  supplicating  permission 
to  take  an  additional  wife,  he  stated  that  "he  Hved 
continually  in  adultery"  and  that  "he  neither  could 
nor  would  abstain  from  impurity."  This  unfaithful 
man  knew  of  Luther's  free  views  on  matrimony  and 
he  appealed  to  him  to  obtain  his  heart's  desire,  not 
only,  as  he  said,  "to  escape  from  the  snares  of  the 
devil,"  but  "to  ease  his  conscience  in  case  he  died  on 
the  battlefield  in  the  cause  of  the  Lutheran  gospel." 
Luther  was  sorely  perplexed.  He  dared  not  repudiate 
the  principle  of  polygamy  he  had  adopted  from  the 
very  commencement  of  his  reformation  and  yet  he 
feared  to  sanction  the  promulgation  of  a  general  law 
allowing  polygamy  to  all  on  account  of  the  scandal 
and  difficulties  it  would  occasion.    The  Reformer  had 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  335 

hoped,  as  he  said,  that  Philip  of  Hesse  would  "take 
an  ordinary,  honest  girl  and  keep  her  secretly  in  a 
house  and  live  with  her  in  secret  marital  relations." 
(Lauterbach's  Diary,  Seidman,  196.)  "The  secret 
marital  relations,"  he  maintained,  "of  princes  and  great 
gentry  is  a  valid  marriage  before  God  and  is  not  unlike 
the  concubinage  and  matrimony  of.  the  Patriarchs." 
(Tischreden  Von  Concubinal  der  Furster.)  The  inter- 
esting penitent,  apparently  so  tender  of  soul,  was  not, 
however,  to  be  thwarted  in  his  shameful  designs.  He 
knew  that  bigamy  was  a  crime,  punishable  with  death 
according  to  German  law^  and  in  order  to  avoid  most 
serious  consequences,  which  in  less  turbulent  times 
would  eventuate  to  his  discomfort,  he  felt  it  was  to 
his  interest  to  have  some  approbation  of  authority  for 
his  shameful  petition  for  a  double  marriage  and  thus 
offer  a  sedative  to  his  conscience  in  the  thought  that 
he  lived  in  lawful  wedlock.  The  dissolute  prince 
urged  his  indecent  proposition,  until  finally  Luther 
and  all  of  his  Wittenberg  theologians  shamefully 
acceded  to  his  request  and  granted  him  permission  to 
take  a  second  wife  during  the  life  time  of  the  first 
with  the  sole  condition  that  she  should  not  be  publicly 
recognized.  The  document,  which  expresses  the  grant 
of  dispensation,  accompanied  with  a  representation  of 
the  difficulties  of  the  case  and  under  condition  of  its 
being  kept  secret,  was  written  by  Melanchthon  and 
covers  about  five  pages  of  De  Wette,  a  Professor  of 
Protestant  Divinity  at  Basle.  This  document,  signed 
by  Luther  and  seven  of  his  associate  theologians, 
amongst  other  things,  says :  'Tf  your  Highness  has 
altogether  made  up  your  mind  to  marry  another  wife, 
we  declare  under  an  oath  that  it  ought  to  be  done 
secretly.  .  .  .No  conditions  or  scandals  of  any  impor- 
tance will  be  the  consequence  of  this  (of  keeping  the 
marriage  secret),  for  it  is  nothing  unusual  for  princes 
to  have  concubines ;  and  although  the  reason  could 
not  be  understood  by  ordinary  people,  nevertheless, 
more  prudent  persons  would  understand  it  and  this 
modest  way  of  living  would  please  more  than  adul- 


336  The  Facts  About  Luther 

tery.  .  .nor  are  the  sayings  of  others  to  be  cared  for, 
if  our  conscience  is  in  order.  Thus  and  thus  far 
only  do  we  approve  of  it."  *'For  what  was  allowed 
in  the  law  of  Moses  concerning  marriage,  the  gospel 
does  not  revoke  or  forbid.  .  .  .Your  Highness  has, 
therefore,  not  only  the  decision  (testimonium)  of  us 
all  in  case  of  necessity,  but  also  our  foregoing  consid- 
eration." "That  is  to  say:  We  allow  the  marriage, 
but  at  the  same  time  we  wish  you  also  to  consider 
whether  it  would  not  be  more  advisable  to  give  up 
all  thoughts  of  the  double  marriage." 

Philip  of  Hesse,  having  obtained  the  sanction  he 
wanted,  cared  little  for  the  singular  advice  of  the 
reformed  theologians.  The  document  granting  him 
the  longed-for  dispensation  was  issued  December  lo, 
1539,  and  Philip  of  Hesse  launches  out  with  the 
approval  of  the  Father  of  the  Reformation  and  his 
associates  on  his  course  of  concubinage  and  adultery 
a  iew  months  later,  early  in  1540.  Philip's  wife,  the 
daughter  of  the  Elector,  gave  a  written  consent  to 
the  ignominious  arrangement  after  the  unfaithful 
husband  ''had  clearly  proved  to  her  that  the  double 
marriage  was  not  against  the  laws  of  God."  In  return 
she  was  promised  that  she  would  always  have  the 
distinction  of  being  the  chief  wife  and  only  her  chil- 
dren were  to  have  a  right  to  the  honors  and  political 
privileges  of  the  father.  In  keeping  with  the  whole 
distrusting  proceedings  the  Rev.  Denis  Melander,  one 
of  the  eight  who  signed  the  letter  granting  the  dispen- 
sation, and  who  had  three  wives  living,  officiated  at 
the  shameful  and  scandalous  ceremony  of  handing 
over  to  Philip  his  chosen  concubine.  "Melander,"  as 
Verres  remarks,  "was  the  right  man  in  the  right  place 
and  he  might  be  depended  upon  to  dwell  in  the  v/edding 
sermon  on  the  peace  of  conscience  with  which  this 
matrimonial  alliance  might  be  entered  into  and  to 
inveigh  against  the  Papal  tyranny  which  had  for  so 
long  a  time  curtailed  the  carnal  freedom  of  Chris- 
tians." 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  337 

Shortlv  after  the  unholy  alliance  of  Philip  with 
Margaret  Von  der  Saal,  a  lady  of  honor  to  his  sister, 
the  secret  of  their  union  became  public  and  the  scandal 
occasioned  widespread  consternation  in  the  newly 
formed  Lutheran  camp.  When  Melanchthon  discov- 
ered that  the  news  of  the  double  marriage  was  spread 
broadcast  ''he  sickened  almost  to  death  with  remorse" 
on  account  of  the  sanction  he  had  given  to  it.  The 
less  impressible  Luther,  however,  was  not  so  easily 
overcome  as  his  truculent  partner  in  the  loathsome 
and  illegal  transaction.  To  deny  the  truth  was  an 
end  devoutly  to  be  wished  for,  as  Luther  was  afraid 
of  the  evil  consequences  to  the  public  who  would  come 
to  learn  of  the  Prince's  double  marriage.  In  his 
anxiety  to  prevent  the  blame  from  being  attached  to 
his  nam^e,  he  pretended  in  speech  and  in  letters  to 
his  intimate  friends  that  he  knew  absolutely  nothing 
about  the  whole  affair.  After  consultation  with  Bucer. 
who  was  the  chief  agent  in  the  arrangements,  and 
some  other  intimates,  it  took  a  short  time  for  Luther 
to  decide  that  the  rumor  of  the  permission  given  to 
Philip  to  take  a  second  woman  and  the  farcical 
marriage  should  be  met  with  a  flat  contradiction; 
"for,"  as  he  said,  "a  secret  yes  must  remain  a  public 
no  and  vice  versa."  (De  Wette — Seidemann,  VL, 
262,.)  Then  Luther  went  so  far  as  to  declare:  "What 
would  it  matter  if  for  the  sake  of  greater  good  and 
of  the  Christian  Church  one  were  to  tell  a  good,  down- 
right lie?"     (Lenz.  Brief wechsel,  i,  382.) 

No  doubt  Luther  was  heartily  ashamed  of  grantiner 
to  Philip  the  dispensation,  which  he  issued  through 
human  respect  and  in  order  to  prevent  the  loss  of 
a  powerful  ally  in  the  advancement  of  the  cause 
of  the  new  gospel.  The  Landi^^rave,  however, 
wanted  no  'big  lie"  to  be  told  about  the  conces- 
sion made  in  his  behalf  and  he  threatened  to 
expose  Luther,  who  was  trying  to  reverse  himself 
before  the  public.  "You  will  have  to  remem'.c-." 
Philip  said  to  Luther,  "in  case  you  withdra-.v 
approbation  that  we  should  be  forced  to  ^- 


338  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  accusers  your  written  memorial  and  your  signa- 
ture to  show  what  (concubinage)  has  been  allowed 
to  us."  This  threat  threw  Luther  into  a  state  of 
wild  anger.  *T  have  this  advantage,"  he  said :  ''that 
your  grace  and  even  all  devils  have  to  bear  witness 
and  to  confess:  first,  that  it  was  a  secret  advice; 
secondly,  that  with  all  solicitude  I  have  begged  to 
prevent  its  becoming  public;  thirdly,  that  if  it  comes 
to  the  point,  I  am  sure  that  not  through  me  it  has 
been  made  public.  As  long  as  I  have  these  three 
things  I  would  not  advise  the  devil  himself  to  start 
my  pen.  .  .1  am  not  so  much  afraid  for  myself,  for 
when  it  is  a  question  of  writing  I  know  how  to 
wriggle  out  of  the  matter  and  to  leave  your  grace  in 
it — a  thing  which  I  do  not  mean  to  do  if  I  can  help 
it."  (De  Wette — Seidemann  VL,  273.)  The  unpleasant 
matter,  which  caused  widespread  scandal,  was  in  a 
short  time  gotten  over  and  peace  being  re-established 
between  the  unholy  combatants,  the  polygamous  Philip 
and  his  vile  counselor  became  the  closest  friends. 

Here  we  may  be  permitted  to  remark  that  it  is  a 
matter  of  common  knowledge  that  Luther's  relations 
with  truth,  honesty  and  uprightness  were  not  always 
what  might  be  expected  from  one  who  claimed  his 
mouth  "was  the  mouth  of  Christ."  Not  to  speak  of 
his  general  attitude  of  misrepresentation  of  everything 
Catholic,  we  have  his  frank  admission  of  his  readi- 
ness to  make  use  of  what  he  calls  "a.  good,  downright 
lie"  "in  the  complication  consequent  on  Philip's 
bigamy  and  his  invitation  to  the  Landgrave  to  escape 
from  the  dilemma  in  this  way."  It  is  as  clear  as  day- 
light that  the  reformer  not  only  believed  in  lying 
and  duplicity,  but  that  he  w^as,  moreover,  prepared 
to  make  any  and  every  sacrifice  to  uphold  the  same. 
To  the  specimens  of  Luther's  teaching  given  above, 
we  have  only,  in  confirmation  of  what  we  allege,  to 
add  one  out  of  many  of  his  celebrated  utterances, 
viz.,  "that  in  order  to  cheat  and  to  destroy  the  Papacy, 
everything  is  allowed."  (De  Wette,  i,  478.)  If  a 
Catholic,  especially  a  Jesuit,  had  ever  played  fast  and 


Luther  as  \  Religtotts  Reformer  339 

loose  with  truth  as  Luther  did,  what  an  outcry,  and 
justly  so,  there  would  be!  In  order  to  divert  atten- 
tion from  Luther's  behavior  regarding  the  obliga- 
tion of  speaking  with  truth  and  honesty,  our  enemies, 
in  the  hope  to  fan  the  passions  and  hatreds  of  the 
purblind,  ignorant,  prejudiced  classes  in  the  com- 
munity, are  constantly  insinuating  and  charging  that 
it  was  not  the  Reformer,  but  the  Jesuits,  who  vvere 
the  real  propagators  and  defenders  of  the  infamous, 
absurd  and  damnable  principle  that  "the  end  justifies 
the  means."  That  calumny  will  not  down,  although 
it  and  a  thousand  others  have  time  and  again  been 
exploded.  However,  no  scholar  to-day,  no  person  of 
sane  mind,  can  be  found  to  give  the  infamous  insinua- 
tion a  moment's  attention,  for  the  good  and  sufficient 
reason  that  the  absurd  doctrine  is  not  and  never  was 
held  by  Jesuits  or  any  other  Catholics.  It  is  incum- 
bent on  non-Catholics  to  name  the  Jesuit  who  an- 
nounced the  despicable  principle  that  "the  end  justifies 
the  means."  Let  them  name  the  time,  the  place,  the 
circumstances  of  such  an  announcement.  If  they  can 
give  proof,  however  meagre,  for  the  alleged  charge 
sustaining  such  teaching,  the  grateful  thanks  of 
every  God-fearing  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the 
community  will  be  theirs.  This,  however,  no  one 
can  do.  Great  scholars  have  imdertaken  that  task 
and  found  their  labors  to  be  in  vain.  Grown-up  men 
of  intelligence  who  have  made  any  research  on 
the  subject  are  no  longer  frightened  by  the  silly 
bugbear  invented  to  deceive  and  inflame  the  passions 
of  the  ignorant  and  dishonest  of  heart.  The  malicious 
charge,  unfounded  and  incapable  of  proof,  is  thrown 
out  in  many  quarters  merely  to  hide  and  save  from 
view  its  real  author,  propagator  and  defender.  Whilst 
Luther  did  not  actually  formulate  the  words  embodying 
the  absurd  principle,  the  teaching  he  announced  and 
the  action  he  adopted  were  always  and  ever  in  the 
direction  of  the  end  justifying  the  means.  To  Luther 
and  to  no  one  else  may  be  traced  directly  and  unerr- 
ingly  the   fatherhood  of   this   unsavoiy,   unhallowed, 


340  The  Facts  About  Luther 

unmanty  and  un-Christian  principle.  Until  non- 
Catholic  preachers  and  writers  can  produce  a  single 
utterance  directly  or  indirectly  attached  to  the  Jesuits 
of  so  abominable  a  nature  as  we  have  shown  of 
Luther,  the  unanimous  verdict  of  an  honest  and  impar- 
tial public  will  condemn  them  to  silence. 

The  double  marriage  of  Philip  and  the  relation  of 
the  Reformer  to  the  bigamy  of  his  powerful  disciple, 
was  made  the  occasion  of  a  remarkable  speech  in  this 
country  in  the  House  of  Representatives  January 
29,  1900.  (Cong.  Record,  Vol.  33,  p.  iioi.)  Con- 
gressman Roberts  of  Utah,  charged  with  polygamy, 
which  he  could  not  deny  and  for  which  he  was  not 
allowed  to  take  the  oath  of  office,  called  the  attention 
of  the  country  to  Luther.  "Here,"  he  said,  "in  the 
resident  portion  of  this  city  you  erected — May  21, 
1884 — a  magnificent  statue  of  stern  old  Martin  Luther, 
the  founder  of  Protestant  Christendom.  You  hail 
him  as  the  apostle  of  liberty  and  the  inaugurator  of 
a  new  and  prosperous  era  of  civiHzation  for  man- 
kind, but  he  himself  sanctioned  polygamy  with  which 
I  am  charged.  For  me  you  have  scorn,  for  him  a 
monument."  And  he  cited,  as  well  he  might,  passages 
from  Luther's  writings  to  support  his  views.  How 
truly  v/onderful  is  the  perversity  of  human  nature. 
That  sarrie  man  who  bears  witness  in  favor  of  Mor- 
monism,  which  is  a  new  development  of  private 
judgment  in  religious  matters  among  us  in  America, 
and  is  in  direct  hostihty  to  the  groundwork  of  our 
society,  and.  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word,  to  our  civili- 
zation, is  cited  on  occasions  and  hailed  by  Lutherans 
and  other  clergymen  in  our  cities  in  the  twentieth 
century  as  the  one  v/hom  the  German  nation  has  to 
thank  for  their  home  life  and  their  ideals  of  married 
life.  Let  the  wives  and  mothers  of  America  ponder 
well  the  polygamous  phase  of  the  Reformation  before 
they  say  "Amen"  to  the  unsavory  and  brazen  laudations 
of  the  profligate  opponent  of  Christian  marriage,  Chris- 
tian decency  and  Christian  propriety.  Compare  the 
teachings  of  Luther  on  polygamy  with  those  of  Joseph 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  341 

Smith,  the  Mormon  prophet  and  visionary,  and  see 
their  striking  similarity.  Mormonism  in  Salt  Lake 
City,  in  Utah,  which  has  brought  so  much  disgrace  to 
the  American  people,  is  but  a  legitimate  outgrowth  of 
Luther  and  Lutheranism.  No  wonder  that  the 
wretched  institution  of  divorce  came  along  to  degrade 
womanhood  and  revive  the  usages  of  barbarism. 

Numerous  respectable  Protestants  who  know  Luther 
in  his  historical  setting,  admit  that  he  cared  little  or 
nothing  for  the  sacramental  character  of  marriage  and 
that  from  the  lofty  eminence  of  a  once  Catholic  pulpit, 
in  the  presence  of  men  and  women,  married  and 
unmarried,  young  and  old,  he  positively  sanctioned 
adultery  in  the  clearest  and  most  unmistakable  manner. 
It  is  true  that  he  only  allows  it  in  certain  given  circum- 
stances and  that  he  requires  the  previous  approval  of 
the  community,  but  the  stubborn  fact  remains  that 
he  unhesitatingly  sanctioned  it. 

Karl  Hagen,  a  celebrated  Protestant  historian,  says : 
"He  (Luther)  went  so  far  as  to  allow  one  party  to 
satisfy  his  propensities  out  of  wedlock  that  nature 
might  receive  satisfaction.  It  is  quite  evident  that  his 
view  of  matrimony  is  the  same  as  prevailed  in  antiquity 
and  again  appeared  in  the  French  Revolution."  We 
beg  to  note  that  the  high  ideal  of  home  life  and  the 
married  state  that  the  Reformer  so  openly  and  brazenly 
taught  the  German  nation  and  which  his  imitators  so 
strongly  and  lovingly  uphold  before  an  unsophisticated 
public,  is  by  the  Protestant  testimony  just  cited,  the 
same  as  existed  among  the  Pagans  of  old  and  later 
on  in  the  French  Revolution,  whose  forerunner  was 
Luther. 

Returning  for  a  moment  to  the  adulterous  marriage 
of  Prince  Philip  of  Hesse,  to  which  bigamous  alliance 
Luther  gave  his  sanction,  we  wish  to  remind  the  reader 
that  according  to  Kostlin,  the  most  prominent  modern 
champion  of  the  Reformer,  "this  double  marriage  was 
not  only  the  greatest  scandal,  but  the  greatest  blot  in 
the  history  of  the  Reformation  and  in  the  life  of 
Luther."     TKostlin,  2,  481,  486.)     We  may  add  with 


343  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Fr.  O'Connor,  S.  J.,  "that  the  blot  is  so  great  as  to 
blot  out  every  possibility  of  one  ever  looking  upon 
Luther  as  a  Reformer  sanctioned  and  commissioned  by 
Almighty  God.  For  marriage  is  one  of  the  most 
important  and  most  essential  elements  both  of  the 
social  and  religious  order.  And  God  would  not  allow 
a  Reformer  really  chosen  by  Himself  to  trample  under 
foot  the  law  concerning  the  unity  of  marriage,  which 
was  promulgated  by  Christ,  the  first  born  Reformer 
of  the  World." 

Luther  preached  and  wrote  much  on  the  universal 
obligation  of  marriage.  He  was  anxious  that  all  should 
enter  wedlock,  because  his  low  estimate  of  human 
nature  led  him  to  believe  that  "no  man  or  woman  could 
remain  chaste  outside  of  matrimony."  Holding  such 
views  it  is  rather  surprising  that  he  waited  until  his 
forty-second  year  to  give  practical  effect  to  his  teaching 
by  marrying  a  nun  who  broke  her  enclosure  before 
breaking  her  vows.  Within  the  circle  of  his  scheme 
of  ecclesiastical  Reformation,  Luther  included  the 
marriage  of  priests  and  monks  and,  as  he  was  one,  why 
should  he  not  put  his  own  views  into  practice,  join 
the  crowd  of  the  lawless  ones  and  hold  up  his  infamy 
to  the  public  for  imitation? 

But,  if  we  still  have  any  regard  for  Divine  things, 
then  we  cannot  forget  that  Luther,  in  order  to  wed,  had 
to  commit  an  act  of  infidelity  towards  God  and  dis- 
regard his  vow  of  celibacy.  No  excuse  can  be  offered 
to  palliate  or  condone  his  infidelity. 

The  sacred  obligations  of  vows  are  frequently  men- 
tioned in  the  Bible  and  are  of  Divine  institution.  These 
vows  are  clothed  with  a  solemn  character  and  are 
forever  binding,  li  the  God  in  which  Lutherans 
profess  to  believe  is  not  a  myth,  but  a  personal  God, 
to  whom  we  sustain  certain  relations  and  with  whom 
certain  relations  can  be  formed,  then,  as  a  Protestant 
writer  puts  it :  "The  idea  involved  in  a  vow  was  that  of 
a  definite  contract  or  covenant  entailing  a  whole  series 
of  after  consequences  depending  upon  the  condition 
being  fulfilled,  a  promise  and  an  acceptance  mutually 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  343 

sealed  by  which  both  parties  in  the  covenant  were 
aftected.  Even  as  God  comes  forth  out  of  Himself  to 
make  a  covenant  with  His  creatures  and  confirms  it  by 
an  oath,  so  may  man  go  forth  from  himself,  sealing 
the  covenant  by  his  promise."  (Carter,  "The  Churcli 
and  the  World.") 

In  the  very  first  epochs  of  the  history  of  God's 
people,  vows,  free,  deliberate  promises  made  to  the 
Almighty  of  something  of  superior  excellence,  received 
a  special  Divine  sanction.  Let  the  maHgners  of  vows 
turn  to  the  twenty-eighth  chapter  of  Genesis  and  they 
will  read  of  Jacob's  vow,  the  first  of  which  a  record 
has  come  down  to  us,  while  the  blessings  he  afterwards 
received,  proved  that  his  vow  was  looked  upon  with 
Divine  favor.  In  the  one  hundred  and  thirty-first  Psalm 
David  "vowed  a  vow"  to  build  a  temple  to  God,  and 
how  acceptable  such  a  vow  was  to  the  Divine  Majesty 
we  learn  from  the  seventh  chapter  of  the  second  Book 
of  Kings.  The  tenor  of  many  other  passages  in  the 
Old  Testament  shows  that  one  of  the  special  ways  by 
which  the  Jewish  people  honored  and  worshipped  God 
w^as  the  taking  of  vows.  All  along  from  the  beginning, 
the  taking  of  vows  had  received  among  them,  time 
and  again,  the  Divine  sanction ;  to  it  they  had  recourse 
when  pressed  by  calamity  or  when  demanding  par- 
ticular favors,  or  again  when  striving  to  make  amend  ~» 
for  past  obstinacy.  They  felt,  and  they  knew  revela- 
tion, that  the  sacrifice  of  the  will  through  the  obligation 
of  a  solemn  promise  was  most  acceptable  to  the  Lord. 
Of  this  they  had  a  suggestive  proof  also  in  the  exact- 
ness with  which  He  required  the  fulfillment  of  vov/s. 
"When  thou  hast  made  a  vow  to  the  Lord,  thy  God,' 
it  was  said  in  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  Deuteronomy, 
"thou  shall  not  delay  to  pay  it,  because  the  Lord,  thy 
God  will  require  it.  And  if  thou  delay,  it  shall  be 
imputed  to  thee  for  a  sin." 

The  practice  then  of  taking  vows  to  God  comes  down 
to  man  from  the  tradition  of  primitive  revelation.  The 
Mosaic  dispensation  confirmed  that  practice  anew  an! 
Christ,  the  Lord,  ratified  the  moral  teaching  of  th  ; 


344  The  Facts  About  Luther 

past,  blessing  with  an  especial  grace  all  those  who 
aspired  to  follow  Him  more  closely  by  an  entire 
offering  of  themselves  tc  the  Divine  goodness  by 
solemn  engagement  or  vow. 

Luther  was  a  member  of  a  Religious  Order  and  a 
priest  of  the  Catholic  Church.    Of  hiS  own  free  choice, 
for  the  greater  love  of  Christ  and  as  a  means  to  reach 
perfection,  he  engaged  to  practise  chastity  and  bound 
himself  to  it  by  solemn  promise.     He  knew  that  his 
consecration  to  the  religious  calling  had  a  deep  signifi- 
cance,   and    he    knew,    moreover,    as    a    professor  of 
Scripture,  it  was  laid  down  in  Numbers  xxx,  2,  that 
**he  who  takes  a  vow  shall  not  break  his  word;  he 
shall  do  according  to  all  that  proceedeth  out  of  his 
mouth."     Having  taken  the  vow  to  live  his  life  in  the 
observance  of  celibacy  and  having  failed  to  keep  the 
covenant  and  contract  he  solemnly  made  with  God, 
his  infidehty  was  nothing  short  of  the  commission  of  a 
most  grievous  sin.    And  not  only  was  the  violation  of 
his  vow  an  offense  against  the  law  of  God,  but  it  was 
a  crime  against  the  laws  of  the  State  then  existing. 
In  his  day  not  only  the  Church  but  the  State  also  pro- 
hibited priests  from  marrying.   The  reader  is  requested 
to  remember  this  point  in  dealing  with  Luther's  marital 
venture.   To  violate  law,  divine,  ecclesiastical  and  civil, 
never    disconcerted     this     instigator     of     revolution, 
upholder  of  adultery  and  defender  of  bigamy,  divorce, 
and  polygamy.     It  came  easy  to  this  'lawless  one"  to 
offend  against  legitimate  authority,  but,   in   violating 
the  laws  of  God  and  disregarding  his  vow  of  chastity 
by  taking  a  partner  unto  himself,  he  committed  an  act 
of  perfidy  and  his  union,  even  from  a  legal  standpoint, 
was  no  marriage.     Katherine  Von  Bora  was  only  his 
companion  in  sin  and  the  children  brought  into  the 
world  through  the  unholy  aUiance  were   illegitimate 
children. 

This  is  sad  reading,  but  there  is  no  help  for  it. 
Luther  claimed  to  be  a  "reformer"  and  as  such  he  must 
be  inexorably  judged.  Think  you  now  that  the  man 
v;ho^e  teachings  and  whose  behavior  run  counter  to 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  345 

the  laws  of  God,  of  His  Church  and  of  the  State 
deserves  for  a  moment  to  be  considered  a  "reformer"? 
AH  law-loving  citizens  protest  against  such  an  outrage. 
Luther,  of  course,  has  his  defenders  and  they  are  not 
devoid  of  ways  and  means  to  support  his  evil  doings 
at  all  costs.  In  this  specific  case  they  claim,  notwith- 
standing all  Scriptural  teaching  to  the  contrary,  that 
their  master  had  a  right  to  break  his  vow  of  celibacy, 
because  *'it  was  a  sin  in  him  to  take  such  a  vow."  Mark 
the  last  words  and  then  reflect  on  how  they  hold  him 
up  as  the  great  and  only  impeccable  one.  But,  passing 
this  over  for  the  moment,  we  ask  who  is  to  be  the 
judge  of  his  right  to  break  a  vow  and  by  what  code 
of  laws  was  such  a  vow  made  to  the  Lord  God  not 
binding  and  of  perpetual  observance? 

The  reasons  that  impelled  Luther  to  marry,  as 
gathered  from  his  writings,  are  enumerated  by  Grisar 
as  follows:  i.  Because  it  was  necessary  to  shut  the 
mouth  of  those  who  spoke  evil  of  him  on  account  of 
his  relations  with  Bora.  2.  Because  he  was  obliged 
to  take  pity  on  the  forsaken  nun.  3.  Because  his  father 
wished  it.  4.  Because  the  Catholics  represented  matri- 
mony as  contrary  to  the  Gospel.  5.  Because  even  his 
friends  laughed  at  his  plan  of  marrying.  6.  Because 
the  peasants  and  the  priests  threatened  him  with  death 
and  he  must  therefore  defy  the  errors  raised  by  the 
devil.  7.  Because  God's  will  was  plainly  apparent  in  the 
circumstances.  Melanchthon's  reason,  viz.,  "that  man 
is  impelled  to  marriage  by  nature  Luther  does  not 
himself  bring  forward."  But  whatever  may  have  been 
his  motives  the  fact  remains  that  he  established  himself 
with  one  escaped  nun  and  lived  with  her  as  faithfully 
as  he  could.  This  sacrilegious  breaking  of  vows  by 
monk  and  nun  cannot  be  condoned  by  ingenious  excuses 
and  we  object  to  his  defenders  calling  his  alliance  with 
Katherine  "matrimony"  and  speaking  of  it  as  "family 
life."  This  view  might  be  regarded  as  "slander,"  as 
"papistical  malice,"  because  his  admirers,  closin?  their 
eves  to  the  facts,  do  not  want  the  truth  to  prevail.  But 
there  is  no  "slander"  or  "papistical  malice"  in  the 


346  The  Facts  About  Luther 

statement.  Indeed  we  wish  we  were  not  under  the 
necessity  to  record  it.  If  there  be  any  blame  in  pre- 
senting this  version,  remember  it  does  not  belong  to 
us,  but  to  no  less  an  authority  than  Melanchthon, 
Luther's  co-laborer  and  intimate  friend.  A  letter  writ- 
ten by  this  "light  of  the  Reformation"  to  Camerarius 
gives  all  the  proof  needed  to  support  the  contention. 
This  letter  runs  as  follows: 

"Greetings:  Since  you  have  probably  received 
divergent  accounts  concerning  Luther's  marriage,  I 
judge  it  well  to  send  you  my  views  on  his  wedding.  On 
the  thirteenth  of  June,  Luther  married  unexpectedly 
Bora  without  giving  any  information  beforehand  to  his 
friends.  In  the  evening  he  invited  to  a  dinner  the 
Pommer(Burgenhagen), Lucas,  the  painter,  and  Appel, 
and  he  (Luther)  performed  the  usual  ceremony.  You 
will  perhaps  be  amazed  that  he  can  be  so  heartless  in 
such  times  when  noble  people  Hve  in  trouble,  and  that 
he  should  lead  a  more  easy  life  and  thus  undermine  his 
usefulness  when  Germany  stands  in  need  of  his 
judgment  and  ability.  But,  I  beheve,  that  it  came  about 
in  this  manner.  He  (Luther)  is  light-minded  and 
frivolous  to  the  last  degree ;  the  nuns  pursued  him  with 
great  cunning  and  drew  him  on.  Perhaps  all  this 
association  with  them  has  rendered  him  effeminate,  or 
inflamed  his  passions,  noble  and  high-minded  though 
he  be.  He  seems  after  this  fashion  to  have  been  drawn 
into  the  untimely  change  in  his  mode  of  Hfe.  It. is 
clear,  however,  that  the  gossip  concerning  his  previous 
criminal  intercourse  with  her  (Bora)  was  false.  Now 
the  thing  is  done  it  is  useless  to  find  fault  with  it,  or  to 
take  it  amiss,  for  I  believe  that  nature  impels  man  to 
matrimony.  Even  though  this  life  is  low,  yet  it  is  holy 
and  more  pleasing  to  God  than  the  unmarried  state. 
I  am  in  hopes  that  he  will  now  lay  aside  the  buffoonery 
for  which  we  have  so  often  found  fault  with  him,  for 
a  new  life  brings  new  manners,  as  the  proverb  runs. 
And  since  I  see  that  Luther  is  to  some  extent  sad  and 
troubled  about  this  change  in  his  way  of  life,  I  seek 
very  earnestly  to  encourage  him  that  he  has  done 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformlr  347 

nothing,  which,  in  my  opinion,  can  be  made  a  subject 
of  reproach  to  him.  He  would,  indeed,  be  a  very 
godless  man  who,  on  account  of  the  mistake  of  the 
doctor,  should  judge  shghtingly  of  his  doctrine.** 
(Sessions  of  the  Academy  of  Munich,  1876,  p.  491. 
Original  in  Chigi  Library  in  Rome.) 

From  this  letter  it  is  quite  evident  that  the  ideals 
and  motives  which  prompted  the  "Reformer"  to  marry 
were  so  low,  so  degrading,  so  pagan,  that  they  vexed 
and  worried  his  friends  and  intimates,  who  were  by 
no  means  candidates  for  canonization  and  were  not 
proof  against  the  pleadings  of  the  devil's  advocate. 
Melanchthon  acknowledges  that  Luther's  nature  and 
''former  buffoonery"  compelled  him  to  this  union  with 
Katherine  Von  Bora.  His  remarks  in  che  letter  as  to 
certam  rumors  no  doubt  concern  suspicions  which  were 
cast  upon  Luther's  relations  with  Bora  before  their 
marriage.  His  conduct  with  Bora  previous  to  wedding 
her  called  forth  from  both  friends  and  enemies  severe 
and  apparently  well-grounded  criticism.  Luther  himself 
admits  that  his  marriage  was  hastened  precisely  because 
of  the  talk  that  v/ent  the  rounds  concerning  him  and 
Bora.  Burgenhagen  said  that  "evil  tales  were  the 
cause  of  Dr.  Martin's  becoming  a  married  man  so 
unexpectedly."  And  Luther  himself  wrote  to  his 
friend,  Spalatin,  that  "I  have  shut  the  mouth  of  those 
who  slandered  me  and  Katherine  Bora."  It  is  not 
proven  that  he  was  openly  immoral  with  her  before 
marriage,  but  it  is  certain  that  there  was  so  much  talk 
going  on  about  his  intimacy  with  the  ex-nun,  that  he 
thought  it  advisable  to  marry  her  sooner  than  he  had 
expected.  Melanchthon  in  his  letter  to  Camerarius 
says  that  he  took  his  Katie  in  haste  and  unbeknown 
to  his  friends.  Was  this  union  even  according  to  civil 
law  valid?  The  jurists  of  those  days  and  of  his  own 
following  did  not  recognize  the  marriage  as  valid. 
Even  we  in  "free  America"  have  not  progressed  as  far 
as  that. 

Melanchthon,  though  he  did  not  object  to  Luther's 
marriage  on  principle,  was  nevertheless  anything  but 


348  The  Facts  About  Luther 

edified  by  his  action.  In  his  letter  to  Camerarius,  he 
states  that  the  "Reformer"  was  rather  sad  and 
disturbed  on  account  of  his  entrance  upon  the  new 
state  of  life.  Did  the  voice  of  conscience  denouncing 
the  unholy  alliance  have  something  to  do  with  his 
depressed  and  forlorn  condition?  We  expect  his 
partisans  to  reply  in  the  negative,  but  we  fail  to  see 
how  any  one  who  had  so  grossly  violated  the  holy 
laws  of  the  religious  state  and  of  marriage  could 
possess  peace  and  rest  of  soul,  unless  his  heart  was 
closed  to  all  appeals  of  Divine  suggestion.  Petticoat 
government  in  the  case  of  ex-priests  never  leads  to 
Paradise.  No  wonder,  as  his  friend  Melanchthon  tells 
us,  he  was  depressed  in  spirit  and  sore  of  heart. 

Heretofore  we  have  seen  to  some  extent  how  Luther 
by  precept  and  example  defiled  religion,  disregarded 
morality  and  appealed  to  all  the  evil  propensities  that 
f.esh  contains.  It  is  now  time  to  speak  of  the 
shameless  brutality  and  indescribable  vulgarity  that 
habitually  in  public  and  private  characterized  his 
utterances,  which  were  of  such  a  low,  gross,  filthy 
nature  that  they  would  startle  even  a  pagan.  Almost 
all  of  his  biographers  admit  that  his  language  was 
invariably  coarse  and  vulgar,  imprudent  and  impetu- 
ous, but  their  description  falls  short  of  the  reality, 
because  they  are  either  loath  to  ofifend  their  readers 
or  are  afraid  to  expose  the  man  in  his  real  character. 
If  the  old  saying  be  true  that  "out  of  the  abundance 
of  the  heart  the  mouth  speaketh,"  then  what  must  we 
think  of  Luther's  heart  when  from  the  depth  of  it  he 
threw  out  with  its  every  pulsation  such  utterances  as 
to  give  a  veritable  nausea  to  refined  and  decent  man- 
hood? This  foul-mouthed  evangelist  has  forever  on 
his  tongue  the  words,  "hell,  devil,  damn,  rascal,  thief, 
fool,  ass,  villain"  and  many  others  that  cannot  be 
repeated  to  ears  polite.  Hell  and  the  devil  seem  to 
have  ever  been  uppermost  in  his  thoughts,  for  there 
are  no  words  that  occur  so  frequently  in  his  books. 

In  1 541  Luther  published  a  dirty  little  tirade  entitled 
"Hans  Wurst."    It  was  directed  against  Henry,  Duke 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  349 

of  Bninswick,  who  had  the  courage  to  attack  the 
reformer  and  tell  him  what  he  thought  of  his  ways 
and  doings.  Though  this  book  is  of  small  compass 
the  devil's  name  is  mentioned  no  less  than  one  hundred 
and  forty-six  times.  Perhaps  the  same  thing  may 
be  tnie  of  the  words  "lie,"  "Har,"  etc.  Amongst  the 
names  he  applies  to  his  adversary  we  give  a  few  like 
"dirty  fellow,"  "the  devil  of  Wolfenbuttel,"  "a 
damned  liar  and  villain,"  "the  donkey  of  donkeys," 
"that  damned  Harry,"  "devil  Harry"  and  "Harry 
devil,"  "whose  name  stinks  like  the  devil's  dirt,"  "an 
arch-assassin  and  bloodhound  whom  God  has  sen- 
tenced to  the  fire  of  hell  and  at  the  mention  of  whose 
name  every  Christian  ought  to  spit  out."  He  addresses 
the  Duke  as  follows:  "Thou  beautiful  image  of  thy 
hellish  father,"  and  asks  "how  could  such  a  block- 
head presume  to  write  a  book,  until  you  have  heard 
a .  . . .  of  an  old  sow.  Then  you  may  open  your  mouth 
and  say:  Thanks  to  you  my  beautiful  nightingale: 
here  is  a  text  which  is  meant  for  me."  He  tells 
Henry  that  the  Church  from  which  he  apostatized  is 
"the  devil's  Church,"  "a  whore-church  of  the  devil," 
"an  arch-vvhore  of  the  devil,"  "an  infernal  school  and 
a  stench  den  of  the  devil,"  "an  infernal  whore  and 
the  devil's  last  and  most  abominable  bride,"  "the 
devil's  brother."  Thus  "damned,"  "devil"  and 
"whore"  are  the  choice  words  found  in  nearly  every 
line  of  this  mad  proJuction  and  the  pity  is  that  he  mixes 
the  sacred  Word  of  God  constantly  in  his  revolting 
filth.  In  vileness  of  language  and  bitterness  of  hate 
this  book  has  no  equal.  We  defy  any  Protestant  to 
read  Luther's  Hans  IVurst  without  coming  to  the 
conclusion  that  its  author  was  mentally  deranged  and 
that  his  coarse  invective  was  the  production  of  a 
raving  madman.  No  wonder  that  Zwingle,  notorious, 
immoral  and  corrupt  himself,  speaking  of  Luther's 
eloquence,  says,  "the  time  for  the  Word  of  God  to 
prevail  is  far  off  for  there  is  too  much  heard  of 
'enthusiast,'  'devil,'  'knave,'  'heretic,'  'murderer,' 
*rebel,'  'hypocrite,'  and  like  cussing,  dirty  words," 


350  The  Facts  About  Luther 

It  is  said  by  Luther's  admirers  that  his  vulgarity 
was  the  fault  of  his  time.  Perhaps  it  was,  but  may 
not  the  statement  be  highly  exaggerated?  To  say 
that  his  vulgar  speech  was  the  fault  of  his  age  seems 
to  carry  with  it  an  insult  to  the  German  nation  which 
was  so  far  advanced  in  the  sixteenth  century  that  it 
was  well-known  for  its  reverential  and  respectful  use 
of  language.  Even  if  it  were  true  that  the  ordinary 
classes  were  less  choice  in  their  expressions  than  in 
our  days,  it  is  not  too  much  to  expect  that  one  who 
posed  as  a  ''reformer"  should  at  least  use  the  speech 
of  an  educated  gentleman.  The  excuse  alleged  for 
Luther's  abominations  will  not  hold  good,  for  history 
tells  us  that  many  of  his  friends  and  intimates  of 
those  days  were  shocked  and  disedified  by  his  constant 
use  of  the  most  brutal  and  unseemly  language.  We 
can  prove  by  one  quotation,  and  there  are  hundreds 
to  the  same  effect,  that  his  own  contemporary, 
Bullinger,  the  Swiss  Reformer,  who  was  neither  a 
"Papist"  nor  a  "Saint,"  stood  aghast  at  what  he  calls 
Luther's  "muddy  and  swinish,  vulgar  and  coarse 
teachings."  "Alas,"  he  says,  "it  is  as  clear  as  day- 
light and  undeniable  that  no  one  has  ever  written  more 
vulgarly,  more  coarsely,  more  unbecomingly  in  matters 
of  faith  and  Christian  chastity  and  modesty  and  in  all 
serious  matters  than  Luther.  There  are  writings  by 
Luther  so  muddy,  so  swinish,  Schenhamporish,  which 
would  not  be  excused  if  they  were  written  by  a  shep- 
herd of  swine  and  not  by  a  distinguished  shepherd  of 
souls."  (Waraften  Bekenntnis,  fol.  lo,  p.  95.)  With 
such  testimony  and  that  of  many  others  equally  reli- 
able, it  is  useless  for  the  Reformer's  apologists,  unless 
they  regard  the  people  as  coarse  and  devoid  of  intelli- 
gence, to  consider  his  abominations  and  indecencies 
of  speech  as  the  fault  of  the  times  in  which  he  lived. 
The  truth  is,  it  was  the  fullness  of  his  heart  that  was 
perpetually  bursting  through  all  bonds  of  conventional 
propriety  and  decency. 

The  cesspool  seems  to  have  been  the  garden  that 
furnished   his   choicest   flowers   of    rhetoric.     To  be 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  351 

plainer  still,  "it  is  a  fact,"  Fr.  Johnston  says,  "that 
Luther's  usual  talk  took  its  imagery  most  often  from 
the  privy.  In  this  connection,  perhaps,  it  is  significant 
that  Luther  admitted  that  it  was  precisely  in  the 
privy  of  the  monastery  that  he  received  from  God 
the  revelation  of  his  famous  doctrine  about  justifica- 
tion by  faith  alone.  'By  the  grace  of  God,  while 
thinking  on  one  occasion  in  this  tower  over  those 
words,  'The  just  man  lives  by  faith  alone,'  the  Holy 
Ghost  revealed  the  Scriptures  to  me  in  this  tower.* 
Protestant  biographers  have  naively  attempted  to 
show  that  this  place  was  not  the  monastery  toilet; 
but  there  is  no  reasonable  doubt." 

"This  is  significant,"  the  same  learned  writer 
continues,  "for,  as  above  noted,  it  is  simply  amazing 
how  habitually  Luther  made  use  of  the  imagery  sug- 
gested by  such  a  place.  When  he  wishes  to  vomit 
his  wrath  against  the  Pope  or  the  Cardinals,  his 
favorite  word  is  that  word  which  indicates  the 
contents  of  a  privy.  I  forbear  from  repeating  it. 
This  particular  word  (the  common  popular  English 
word  for  evacuations)  is  constantly  on  his  lips. 
Repeatedly  he  says  that  if  the  Pope  should  send  him 
a  command  to  appear  before  him:  "I  should.  . .  .  upon 

his    summons."      "I sarcastically    said    that    *no 

lawyer  should  speak  till  he  hears  a  sow.'  "  The  reader 
can  find  plenty  of  other  instances  of  the  use  of  this 
word  in  Grisar  Vol.  Ill,  226,  232,  235,  298.  Concom- 
mitant  with  the'use  of  this  filthy  word,  is  the  use  of 
another  signifying  that  portion  of  the  human  body 
which  functions  the  same.  Those  expressions  I 
cannot  repeat  here.  See  for  yourself  Grisar,  e.g., 
Ill,  229,  where  he  tells  the  devil  to  "kiss ." 

"The  vomits  of  the  human  stomach  are  also  a 
frequent  word  wherewith  to  express  his  rage  against 
his  enemies.  For  instance,  he  says,  that  the  Pope 
"vomits"  the  Cardinals.  Again  the  "monks"  are  "the 
lice  placed  by  the  devil  on  God  Almighty's  fur  coat." 
"No  sooner  do  I  pass  a  motion  but  they  smell  it  at 
Rome."    Then  note  this  specimen  of  stable  boy's  wit 


35S  The  Facts  About  Luther 

apropos  of  the  "Pope-ass"  mentioned  before.  ''When 
I  (the  Pope-ass)  bray,  hee-haw,  hee-haw,  or  relieve 
myself  in  the  way  of  nature,  they  must  take  it  all  as 
articles  of  faith,  i.e.  Catholics."  That  other  filthy  word 
common  to  people  who  suit  their  langxiage  to  privies 
was  also  constantly  on  his  lips,  employed  in  endless 
variations." 

"The  most  amazing  aspect  of  this  vulgarity  is  that 
Luther  brings  the  very  name  of  God  into  conjunction 
with  just  such  coarse  expressions.  Thus  in  trying  to 
explain  how  far  God  is  or  is  not  the  author  of  evil, 
he  says :  "Semei  wished  to  curse  and  God  immediately 
directed  his  curse  against  David.  God  says,  *Curse 
him  not  and  no  one  else.*  Just  as  if  a  man  wishes  to 
relieve  himself  I  cannot  prevent  him,  but  should  he 
wish  to  do  so  on  the  table  here,  then  I  should  object 
and  tell  him  to  betake  himself  to  the  corner.'  " 

The  reader  may  consult  Grisar's  monumental  work 
on  Luther  if  he  is  anxious  to  learn  more  about  the 
filthy,  scandalous,  and  indecent  utterances  of  this  vile 
man.  To  all  who  have  hitherto  known  little  of  his 
actual  obscenity  and  vulgarity  of  speech  the  study 
suggested  will  be  not  only  surprising,  but  illuminating. 
After  such  an  inquiry,  no  honest  man  with  any  preten- 
tion to  decency  would  be  found  in  the  ranks  of  those 
Vv^ho  trample  on  the  truth  and  insist  in  spite  of  such 
glaring  faults  that  this  man  was  an  "instrument  of 
God"  for  the  reformation  of  society. 

It  is  appalling  that  men  should  take  this  filthy  talker, 
whose  hopelessly  dirty  language  indicated  the  morally 
diseased  state  of  his  mind,  as  a  guide  to  expound 
Eternal  Law  and  that  they  should  hang  upon  his 
words,  held  him  up  for  imitation  and  entrust  to  him 
their  salvation.  It  is  pitiable  but  true,  that  men  have 
eyes  and  see  not,  they  have  ears  and  hear  not,  they 
have  hearts  and  feel  not.  O!  that  the  eyes  and  the 
ears  and  the  hearts  of  our  separated  brethren,  if  their 
faculties  are  not  blunted,  would  come  to  recognize  the 
unspeakable  character  of  the  Heresiarch's  utterances, 
his  obscene  remarks,  his  vulgar  jokes,  his  habitual 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  35S 

nasty  references  to  sexual  matters,  and  discover  in  time 
that  this  open,  brazen  and  shameless  violator  of  all 
conventional  decency  could  not  in  any  sense  have  been 
raised  up  by  the  All-Holy  God  to  lead  men  to  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

However  outrageous  to  Christian  feeling  and  ab- 
horrent to  Christian  principle  was  his  habitual  filthy 
talk,  it  is  far  surpassed  in  vileness  and  obscenity  when 
he  treats  of  womanhood,  a  fertile  theme  for  his 
dirty  tongue  and  pen.  On  this  subject  he  was  quite 
at  his  ease  and  allowed  himself  singular  license.  In 
the  "CoUoquia"  no  fewer  than  a  hundred  pages  are 
devoted  to  the  fair  sex.  In  this  work  he  surpasses 
himself  in  vulgarity  and  shows  his  brutality  in  inde- 
cent references  to  women.  No  one  could  quote  him 
in  this  respect  without  the  blood  rushing  to  his  head. 
His  warmest  biographers  are  ashamed  of  his  vulgar 
and  unmanly  references  to  women.  The  filthy  expres- 
sions he  recorded  in  his  books  were  so  habitual  with 
him  that  he  even  used  them  in  his  own  home  before 
his  companion  and  the  children.  "Certainly,"  Fr. 
Johnston  says,  "no  Protestant  woman  can  read  them 
without — I  will  not  say  utter  shame  and  womanly 
horror — but  without  indignation  that  any  man,  above 
all  a  spiritual  leader  and  cleric  at  that,  could  speak 
of  her  sex  with  such  ordinary  common  familiarity  and 
coarseness  and  vulgarity  and  downright  obscenity; 
that  could  joke  at  her  sex  in  its  most  sacred  and 
venerable  moral  and  physical  aspects,  taking  a  stable 
boy's  unclean  delight  at  rude  witticisms  over  poor 
woman's  physical  differentiation  from  man ;  that 
could  make  her  very  body  the  inspiration  of  jokes — 
all  evincing  a  cynical  and  vulgar  contempt  for  woman 
as  such;  that  could  even  have  the  vuls^arity  to  lift  the 
covers  of  the  nuptial  bed  and  disclose  its  sacred  secrets 
to  the  gaze  of  others.  Had  any  Catholic  writer  dared 
to  utter  a  fraction  of  what  Luther  thus  wrote  and 
said,  he  would  be  an  eternal  and  shameful  reproach  to 
the  Church  he  so  unworthily  represented." 

To  give  any  idea,  even  the  faintest,  of  this  man's 


354  The  Facts  About  Luther 

filthy  and  loathsome  language  would  be  impossible 
unless  one  is  willing  to  descend  into  the  gutter  and 
wade  in  obscenity.  The  original  sources  are  extant, 
and  any  one  who  wishes  to  consult  them  may  do  so 
if  he  is  prepared  for  the  shock  of  his  life.  Then  he 
will  discover  that  even  the  Bullingers  and  Zwingles 
of  his  own  time  were  weak  indeed  in  their  descrip- 
tion of  Luther's  language  when  they  upbraided  him 
for  its  "doggishness,  dirtiness  and  lasciviousness."  It 
is  so  downright  disgusting  and  hopelessly  obscene  that 
no  one  can  excuse  or  condone  it.  As  his  friend,  the 
Protestant  Kostlin  puts  it,  "his  was  a  vehement, 
vulcanlike  nature."  Just  so:  but  these  vehement, 
vulcanlike  natures  are  the  very  ones  the  Vice  Purity 
Committees  find  in  plenty  in  certain  quarters  of  our 
modem  cities. 

Fr.  Johnston  says :  "From  a  standpoint  of  morality, 
Luther's  teachings  and  practical  advice  and  example 
in  conversation  were  infinitely  below  the  moral 
standard  hitherto  held  by  the  very  Church  he  reviled 
and  constantly  below  even  the  standard  now  generally 
accepted  by  the  Protestants  themselves.  His  claims, 
therefore,  to  'reforming'  the  Church,  are  pathetically 
weak.  Instead  of  teaching  a  purer  morality  he  taught 
a  lower.  There  is  nothing  in  his  teaching,  by  either 
pen  or  word  of  mouth,  that  is  calculated  to  increase 
the  love  of  purity,  or  of  even  conjugal  fidelity,  which 
in  the  Catholic  Church  has  developed  the  fairest 
blossoms  of  maidenly  chastity  and  conjugal  love.  A 
man  or  woman,  who  is  sexually  weak,  will  look  to 
him  in  vain  for  advice  wherewith  to  increase  his  or 
her  strength  in  resisting  the  great  passion — rather 
they  will  find  in  his  word  the  opposite.  This  is  no 
time  to  mince  words.  Therefore,  I  say  deliberately 
that  from  his  own  words  Martin  Luther  must  be 
held  responsible  for  bringing  into  the  world  the  lowest 
standard  of  morality  ever  advocated  by  a  leader 
amongst  Christians — so  low  that  I  defy  a  Protestant 
to  read  him,  though  I  would  advise  no  Protestant 
woman  to  do  so  if  she  be  not  ready  to  read  with  moral 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  355 

safety.     Both  will  feel  considerably  befouled  by  the 
reading." 

Neitzsche  correctly  said  of  Luther  that  "he  had  the 
courage  of  his  sensuality."  We  grant  that  much,  but 
it  is  most  painful  and  decidedly  nauseous  to  deal  with 
such  "courage"  and  be  compelled  to  descend  into  the 
cesspool  of  his  immoralities,  both  of  teaching  and 
behavior.  The  task  of  dealing  with  the  man  who 
won  for  himself  the  reputation  of  being  the  most  foul- 
mouthed  and  coarsest  of  his  age  is  far  from  being 
either  agreeable  or  pleasant.  Although  we  have  not 
given  a  fraction  of  the  indecencies  that  were  habitu- 
ally on  his  lips  we  have  furnished  sufficient  specimens 
of  his  ribaldry  and  obscene  allusions  to  the  unmen- 
tionable parts  of  the  human  body,  its  functions  and 
sexual  differentiations,  to  show  that  his  language, 
character  and  example  were  not  such  as  one  expects 
to  find  in  a  professed  reformer  of  Christianity.  We 
would  rather  not  expose  to  our  readers  the  unspeak- 
able vulgarity  usually  characterising  his  utterances  and 
we  would  much  prefer  not  to  repeat  for  the  public 
his  own  confession  to  the  effect  that  he  received  his 
imaginary  revelations  in  a  privy,  the  imagery  of  which 
colored  and  tainted  too  many  of  his  expositions  of 
those  revelations. 

But  Luther's  partisans  persist  in  forcing  him  upon 
public  attention  and  they  have  only  themselves  to 
blame  if,  under  the  lime-light  of  actual  quotations,  his 
true  words  and  doctrines  and  character  are  exposed  to 
thinking  minds,  who  by  the  thousands  will  come  to 
see  him  in  all  his  ugliness  and  deformity,  and  be 
forced  to  admit  on  the  grounds  of  modern  historical 
research  that  he  could  not  have  been  directly  or  indi- 
rectly called  by  God  to  reform  His  Church. 

In  our  heart  of  hearts,  we  pity  the  man,  regret  his 
abuse  of  Divine  grace  and  deplore  his  life-long  antag- 
onism to  Divine  and  human  law ;  but  when  those  who 
are  ignorant  of  the  facts  resurrect  and  force  this  man 
on  public  notice  in  the  role  of  a  "reformer,"  "a 
liberator  of  humanitv,"  "a  model  of  domestic  life" 


356  The  Facts  About  Luther 

and  "an  instrument  of  God  for  the  uplift  of  society," 
the  interests  of  truth  demand  that  such  misrepresen- 
tation ought  not  to  go  unchallenged,  and  that  the  real 
portrait  of  the  man  as  he  actually  was  ought  to  be 
given  to  the  people. 

The  most  scientific  Lutheran  historians  now  no 
longer  make  an  attempt  to  deny  his  many  and  flagrant 
personal  shortcomings.  It  is  only  those  who  are 
ignorant  of  the  facts :  that  he  proclaimed  to  the  world 
that  chastity  is  impossible  and  a  delusion,  that  licen- 
tiousness is  permissible,  and  that  the  gratification  of 
the  flesh  is  the  aim  of  man  or,  those  who  knowing 
them  deliberately  close  their  eyes  to  his  sinful  teaching 
and  abominable  immoralities,  persist  in  believing  that 
this  moral  leper  and  father  of  divorce  and  polygamy 
was  a  man  of  God  chosen  to  "reform"  the  Church  of 
Christ.  Such  men  are  not  in  a  frame  of  mind  to 
accept  the  verdict  of  Luther's  contemporaries  nor  are 
they  willing  to  accept  the  results  of  the  best  historical 
research  supplied  by  Lutheran  authorities,  which 
overwhelmingly  testify  to  their  hero's  immorality  of 
speech  and  teaching.  In  their  ignoble  course  they  are 
unfortunately  not  so  intent  on  spreading  the  truth  as 
they  are  in  strengthening  the  Lutheran  people  in  their 
errors. 

The  well-known  rage  and  madness  against  the 
Papacy  that  gradually  came  upon  Luther  and 
consumed  him  to  his  last  breath,  making  his  contem- 
poraries suspect  they  had  to  deal  with  one  possessed 
by  the  devil,  has  descended  to  many  of  his  advocates. 
Like  their  master,  heedless  of  right  or  wrong  or  danger, 
they  rave  like  maniacs  against  the  truth  as  preached 
by  Christ's  Church  to  keep  their  followers  in  ignorance 
and  prevent  their  return  to  the  faith  of  their  fathers, 
in  which  alone  can  be  found  rest  and  peace  and  eternal 
happiness.  Their  efforts  to  injure  religion,  its  clergy 
and  institutions  may  be  "much  thought  of  by  fools." 
as  Melanchthon,  Luther's  friend,  co-laborer,  co-re- 
former and  co-hater  of  the  Papacy  once  said  of  his 
master's  writings,  but  they  cannot  and  will  not  prevail 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  35? 

against  the  Church  which  Christ  founded  and  willed 
all  men  to  accept  under  penalty  of  eternal  damnation. 
Luther's  imitators  had  better  be  wise  in  time  and 
understand  before  it  is  too  late  that  where  their  master 
failed  there  is  no  hope  of  their  escape  other  than  by 
seeking  refuge  in  the  bosom  of  the  Mother  Church 
which  he  maligned,  abused,  and  opposed,  but  which 
still  continues,  as  if  he  never  existed,  to  execute  her 
heavenly  mission  and  to  invite  all  to  be  followers  of 
Him,  who  alone  is  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life." 

In  this  little  work  we  have  had  no  desire  to  libel 
Luther's  person,  distort  his  doctrine  or  misrepresent 
his  life  work.  We  would  willingly  allow  him  to 
remain  in  his  grave;  but  as  his  friends  insist  on 
resurrecting  him  we  have  no  alternative  but  to  show 
the  disciples  of  a  system  which  is  the  child  born 
of  a  great  lie,  and  nursed  and  fostered  in  heresy 
and  infamy,  that  Luther  by  his  own  works  and 
teachings  was  a  malicious  falsifier  of  God's  truth, 
a  blasphemer,  a  libertine,  a  revolutionist,  a  hater  of 
religious  vows,  a  disgrace  to  the  clerical  calling,  an 
enemy  of  domestic  felicity,  the  father  of  divorce,  the 
advocate  of  polygamy  and  the  propagator  of  immor- 
ality and  open  licentiousness.  These  charges  are  serious, 
but  we  beg  to  remind  you  that  we  have  not  inter- 
preted or  edited  Luther  as  he  took  the  liberty  to  do 
with  the  Scriptures  and  as  his  friends  did  in  the  case 
of  Melanchthon's  letter  to  Luther  and  the  modern 
issues  of  "The  Table  Talk."  We  have  merely  quoted 
him  from  reliable  sources  and  made  him  his  own 
accuser  and  judge.  The  genuineness  and  authenticity 
of  his  statements  on  religious  and  moral  questions 
can  neither  be  doubted  nor  refuted.  If  any  surprise 
or  scandal  in  exposing  his  degrading  and  debasing 
sentiments  results,  the  blame  rests  not  with  those 
who  picture  the  man  as  he  really  was,  but  with  Luther 
himself  and  his  advocates,  who  have  for  the  last  four 
centuries  deceived  the  world  by  representing  him  as 
a  "Reformer,"  and  a  "God-inspired  man." 

Luther  himself,  be  it  remembered,  felt  keenl)   the 


358  The  Facts  About  Luther 

vulnerability  of  his  character  as  is  evident  from  the 
following  significant  words :  'This  is  what  you  must 
say;  whether  Luther  is  a  saint  or  a  scamp  does  not 
matter  to  me;  his  doctrine  is  not  his,  but  Christ's. 
Leave  the  man  out  of  the  question  but  acknowledge 
the  doctrine."  No.  We  cannot  do  this.  We  cannot 
leave  you  out  of  the  matter  and  accept  your  doctrine 
till  you  give  proof  that  you  are  a  *'saint"  and  not  a 
''scamp. "  Your  Kostlins  and  other  partisans  may 
obey  your  orders,  and  hold  that  your  "vehement  and 
vulcanlike  nature,"  as  they  describe  you,  was  not 
incompatible  with  your  role  of  a  religious  reformer. 
We,  however,  cannot  separate  you  from  your  utter- 
ances and  actions.  Your  character  must  be  taken  into 
the  count,  and  as  you  posed  in  the  role  of  a  reformer, 
we  expect  in  all  decency,  to  find  you  a  "saint,"  and 
not  a  "scamp."  Which  of  these  designations  fits  you 
the  better?  If  you  had  been  a  man  raised  up  by 
God  to  preach  His  doctrine  and  had  led  a  life  such 
as  to  prevent  the  finger  of  scorn  from  being  raised 
against  you,  why  did  you  complain  so  bitterly  about 
the  lamentable  results  of  the  teaching  you  wished 
acknowledged?  As  the  Hfe  of  a  man  is,  so  is  his 
teaching  and  its  results.  Listen  to  your  own  confes- 
sion. "God  knows,"  you  said,  "how  painful  it  is 
for  us  to  acknowledge  that  before  the  advent  of  the 
gospel  everything  was  peaceful  and  quietude.  Now 
all  things  are  in  ferment,  the  whole  world  agitated 
and  thrown  upside  down.  When  the  worldling  hears 
it,  he  is  scandalized  at  the  disobedience  of  subjects 
against  the  government,  rebellion,  war,  pestilence,  the 
destruction  of  Kingdoms  and  countries,  untold  unhap- 
piness  as  the  result  of  the  doctrine  of  the  gospel." 
(Walch  7,  2556.)  Just  so.  You  preached  a  gospel 
of  your  own  manufacture  and  ignored  that  of  Christ. 
What  could  you  expect  from  your  pride  and  rebellion 
but  the  spread  of  indifference  to  religion  and  an 
increase  of  immorality?  Had  you  been  loyal  to  the 
Church  of  your  fathers  and  been  actuated  by  her 
saving  principles  of  reform,  the  results  of  your  life 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  359 

work  would  not  have  been  revolution,  rebellion  and 
war,  but  rather  contentment,  peace  and  true  happiness 
such  as  ever  follows  in  the  wake  of  the  saints  of 
God. 

Three  hundred  years  go  by.  It  is  a  long  time. 
What  Luther  said  of  his  work  in  his  day,  others, 
who  were  loyal  to  him  and  acquainted  with  the 
lamentable  facts,  confirmed  and  amplified.  Hear  this 
wail  of  distress  from  no  less  a  man  than  the  Lutheran 
theologian,  who,  in  the  early  part  of  the  last  century, 
compiled  the  reformer's  works  in  five  large  volumes. 
De  Wette  says:  "The  dissolution  of  the  Protestant 
church  is  inevitable ;  her  framework  is  so  thoroughly 
rotten  that  no  further  patching  will  avail.  The  whole 
structure  of  evangelical  religion  is  shattered,  and  few 
look  with  sympathy  on  its  tottering  fall.  Within  the 
compass  of  a  square  mile,  you  hear  four,  five,  six 
different  gospels.  The  people,  believe  me,  mark  it 
well;  they  speak  most  contemptuously  of  theii 
teachers,  whom  they  regard  either  as  blockheads  or 
knaves,  in  teaching  these  opposite  doctrines.  .  .grow- 
ing immorality,  a  consequence  of  contempt  for 
religion,  concurs  also  as  a  cause  to  its  deeper  downfall. 
.  .  .O  Protestantism,  has  it,  then,  at  last  come  to  this 
with  thee,  that  thy  disciples  protest  against  all 
religion?  Facts,  which  are  before  the  eyes  of  the 
whole  world,  declare  aloud  that  this  signification  of 
thy  name  is  no  idle  play  upon  words." 

Nearly  a  hundred  years  have  rolled  bv  since  the 
preceding  lines  were  penned  and  from  that  time  to 
the  present,  the  De  Wettes  have  been  telling  the 
world  how  Luther's  work  of  reformation  has  waned 
and  how  it  is  gradually  degenerating  into  humani- 
tarianism.  Should  you  want  proof,  take  up  some  of 
the  recent  biographies  of  Luther  written  by  his 
admirers  and  learn  the  appalling  indictment  they 
frame  against  the  whole  religious  system  of  which  the 
Reformer  is  the  father  and  defender.  In  one  of  these 
of  recent  date,  "the  author  without  intending  it,  makes 
it  evident  that  Protestantism  is  not  a  religion  at  all. 


360  The  Facts  About  Luther 

It  has  no  connection  with  God  Almighty.  It  does 
not  make  for  holiness  of  life.  Its  object  is  not  the 
service  of  God.  It  does  not  concern  itself  with  the 
salvation  of  souls.  Its  aim  is  simply  to  do  good  to 
one's  fellow-man ;  not  spiritual  good, — that  is  out  of  its 
purview, — but  whatever  will  be  conducive  to  his  world- 
ly comfort  and  advancement.  Neither  the  service  of 
God,  nor  sanctity  of  life,  nor  the  salvation  of  souls 
is  permitted  to  stand  in  the  way  of  its  achievements." 
Assuredly,  if  Professor  McGiffert's  Picture  of 
Protestantism  is  correct,  "the  sooner,"  that  excellent 
weekly  ''America"  says,  "thinking  people  leave  it  the 
better." 

In  the  days  of  Luther,  one  of  his  contemporaries 
cried  out,  '*Do  open  your  eyes  and  your  hearts,  you 
dear  Germans,  and  use  your  reason  and  do  not  allow 
yourselves  to  be  led  along  by  his  (Luther's)  coarse 
Turkish  mind.  Can  the  natural  mind,  say  nothing  of 
the  spiritual  mind,  conceive  that  Luther  had  a  drop 
of  honor  in  him,  to  say  nothing  of  the  fear  of  God? 
God  have  mercy  on  such  blindness."  (Anatomiae 
Luther  p.  i,  p.  48  quoted  by  Jarke.) 

That  advice  is  pertinent  to  our  own  times.  Assuredly 
it  is  blindness  not  to  recognize  that  Luther's  Protes- 
tantism, except  in  America,  is  mostly  a  part  merely 
of  the  state-machinery  of  the  different  countries  in 
which  it  exists.  Its  various  creeds  are  obsolete,  effete 
and  not  even  the  members  of  the  sects  which  are  sup- 
posed to  hold  them,  pay  the  slightest  attention  to  their 
declarations;  indeed,  in  greater  part,  are  profoundly 
ignorant  of  what  their  declarations  are.  Protestantism, 
in  brief,  has  gone  on  disintegrating  and  dissolving 
until  no  one  knows  or  can  tell  precisely  what  it  is. 
Only  one  uniform,  constant  movement  can  be  dis- 
tinguished amidst  its  continual,  whirling  eddyings, 
and  the  direction  of  that  movement  plainlv  is  towards 
rationalism.  The  dividing  line  between  Protestantism 
and  outSDoken  rationalism  is  invisible.  There  is  none. 
Men  of  sense  which  will  you  hear,  the  Church  of 
Christ,  One,  Holy,  Catholic,  Apostolic,  which  calls 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  861 

you  to  sanctity  and  uprightness  of  life,  or  the  hirelings 
who,  as  St.  Paul  says,  "by  pleasing  speeches  and  good 
wcjrds"  "seduce  the  hearts  of  the  innocent"  and  "make 
dissensions  contrary  to  the  doctrine"  which  the  Master 
announced  to  free,  vivify,  and  save  the  world? 

To  help  all  who  are  anxious  to  come  to  a  knowledge 
of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Christ  Jesus  and  His  Church, 
it  may  be  well  to  recall  that  Luther  before  he  formally 
separated  himself  from  obedience  to  Rome  and  when 
he  seemed  to  abhor  such  a  course,  declared  "I  never 
approved  of  a  schism,  nor  will  I  approve  of  it  for  all 
eternity."  In  a  letter  written  by  him  in  15 19  to  the 
then  reigning  Pontiff  Leo  X.  and  quoted  in  the  History 
of  the  Reformation  by  that  partisan  Merle  D'Aubigne, 
he  says,  "That  the  Roman  Church  is  more  honored 
by  God  than  all  others  is  not  to  be  doubted.  St. 
Peter  and  St.  Paul,  forty-six  popes,  some  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  martyrs,  have  laid  down  their  lives 
in  its  communion,  having  overcome  hell  and  the 
world ;  so  that  the  eyes  of  God  rest  on  the  Roman 
Church  with  special  favor.  Though  nowadays  every- 
thing is  in  a  wretched  state,  it  is  no  ground  for 
separating  from  the  Church.  On  the  contrary,  the 
worse  things  are  going,  the  more  should  we  hold  close 
to  her,  for  it  is  not  by  separating  from  the  Church 
we  can  make  her  better.  ,We  must  not  separate  from 
God  on  account  of  any  work  of  the  devil,  nor  cease 
to  have  fellowship  with  the  children  of  God  who  are 
still  abiding  in  the  pale  of  Rome  on  account  of  the 
multitude  of  the  ungodly.  There  is  no  sin,  no  amount 
of  evil,  which  should  be  permitted  to  dissolve  the  bond 
of  charity  or  break  the  bond  of  unity  of  the  body. 
For  love  can  do  all  things  and  nothing  is  difficult  to 
those  who  are  united." 

These  words  have  the  true  ring  in  them  and  the 
pity  is  that  Luther  ever  forgot  their  significance,  for 
they  not  only  contain  a  strong  and  unanswerable  testi- 
monial in  favor  of  the  Catholic  Church,  but  they 
define  the  only  position  worthy  of  the  true  Christian 
and  sincere  reformer  intent  on  the  improvement  of 


862  The  Facts  About  Luther 

the  unfaithful  of  Christ's  Kingdom  on  earth.  The 
Church  is  the  only  society  upon  earth  where  revolu- 
tion is  never  necessary  and  reform  is  always  possible. 
On  the  Divine  side  the  Church  is  always  perfect,  on 
the  human  side  she  is  a  mixture  of  good  and  evil. 
Reform  is  always  in  order,  but  separation  never. 
When  reform  is  needed,  it  must,  in  order  to  be  blessed, 
begin  within  and  not  without  the  Church.  Separation 
from  the  Church  is  not  reform.  To  stand  up  in 
God's  Church  and  to  cry  out  for  reform  of  real  abuses 
and  scandals,  fired  with  genuine  zeal  and  pure  love 
for  the  beauty  of  Christ's  spouse,  is  a  noble  attitude. 
Such  zeal,  such  love,  and  such  interest  is  capable  of 
doing  all  things.  Had  Martin  Luther  fought  it  out 
on  this  line  his  name  would  have  been  handed  down 
with  benediction  and  praise  along  with  the  great 
names  of  Hildebrand,  Bernard  of  Clairvaux, 
Borromeo  of  Milan  and  Ignatius  of  Loyola,  to  all 
future  generations.  But  undying  loyalty  to  principle 
was  not  one  of  Luther's  cliaracteristics.  His  arro- 
gance and  self-sufficiency  so  dominated  him  that  from 
a  refonner  he  became  a  revolutionist.  Although  he 
declared  that  **no  cause  could  become  so  great  as  to 
excuse  sepr-^ation  from  the  Chi^^ch,"  yet  he  allowed 
himself  to  be  overcome  by  a  radical  spirit  of  free 
individualism  against  the  Divine  authority  of  the 
spouse  of  Christ  and,  under  the  mere  plea  of  a  resus- 
citated and  purified  Gospel,  he  substituted  another 
foundation  for  that  which  the  Master  Himself  had 
placed  and  led  a  religious  revolution  which  was 
both  wrong  in  principle  and  wrong  in  procedure. 
The  specific  work  he  inaugurated  abetted  fresh 
divisions,  created  new  sects  and  bred  interminable 
dissensions  to  the  injury  of  the  Kingdon.  of  Christ. 
Humanity  has  paid  bitterly  during  the  last  four  hun- 
dred years  for  his  rebellion  against  the  Christian 
religion.  The  variations  of  his  system  of  private 
judgment  have  left  the  more  active  intellect  of 
Protestants  everywhere  to-day  to  question  not  so 
much  this  or  that  doctrine  of  Christianity  as  the  why 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  363 

they  are  Christians  at  all.  Thus  the  foundations 
designed  by  Dr.  Martin  Luther  for  Christianity  after 
four  hundred  long  years  of  experience  have  crumbled 
away  almost  entirely  and  nothing  remains  for  intel- 
ligent Protestants  but  the  alternative  of  either  entering 
the  fold  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  remain  Christians 
or  becoming  agnostics,  which  is  a  mild  word  for 
atheists. 

•Luther's  work,  as  the  plain  historical  facts  conclu- 
sively show,  has  proven  an  unsuccessful  experiment. 

t  It  was  the  greatest  of  blunders.  Like  all  similar 
movements  in  the  past  started  in  opposition  to  the 

.'  One,  true  Church  of  God,  it  was  destined  to  fall  to 
pieces  and  terminate  in  self-extinction.  It  had  no 
internal  consistency,  or  individuality,  or  soul,  to  give 
it  any  capacity  for  permanent  propagation.  Its  teach- 
ings were  an  innovation  and,  according  to  their  author, 
caused  an  increase  of  moral  corruption  such  as  was 
not  known  since  pagan  days.  Triumph  it  could  not. 
Four  hundred  years  have  passed  since  Luther's 
Reformation  scheme  was  given  to  the  world  and  in 
spite  of  all  the  attacks  which  the  Church  has  had  to 
sustain  from  heresy,  she  and  her  Supreme  Head 
remain.  The  overruling  arm,  which  in  its  wondrous 
movements  confounds  the  schemes  of  wicked  men, 
interfered  to  preserv^e  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ 
which  though  so  mysterious  in  its  doctrines  and  so 
opposed  to  corrupt  nature  in  its  morals,  remains  in 
open  daylight  in  every  quarter  of  the  world  to  enlighten 
and  guide  and  lift  up  and  heal  human  nature.  In  spite 
of  calumny,  in  spite  of  popular  outbreaks,  in  spite  of 
cruel  torments,  the  Church  lives  on  to  unfold  to  a 
wicked  world  the  purity  of  her  morals,  the  sublimity 
of  her  mysteries,  the  truth  of  her  doctrines,  the  majesty 
of  her  worship  and  the  hope  of  eternal  life  with  which 
she  inspires  her  members.  No  other  religion  gees 
back  to  Christ ;  no  other  reliction  claims  Him  as 
Founder;  no  other  dares  to  speak  in  His  name  and 
infallibly  to  address  itself  by  His  Divine  authority  to 
the  nations   and   the  peoples  of  the   world.     Why? 


364  The  Facts  About  Luther 

Because  no  other  religion,  according  to  our  Lord's 
promise,  is  built  upon  a  rock,  on  one  and  the  same 
faith,  on  one  and  the  same  Church  government,  on 
the  same  complete  unity,  with  the  guarantee  of  His 
abiding  presence  and  enduring  protection  till  the  end 
of  time  to  safeguard  the  truths  and  means  which  He 
gave  for  the  salvation  of  those  who  would  believe  and 
follow  Him.  'There  is  not,"  then,  as  the  Protestant 
Macaulay  says,  "and  there  never  was  on  this  earth 
an  institution  so  well  deserving  examination  as  the 
Catholic  Church." 

Such  an  examination  can  only  emphasize  the  fact 
that  the  world  has  no  need  of  a  new  morality  or  a  new 
religion.  The  ideal  morality  and  the  true  religion 
exist.  Our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who  is  the  true  Leader 
in  the  onward  and  upward  march  of  humanity,  gave 
the  world  His  doctrines  and  His  principles  of  morality 
as  the  standards  and  ideals  of  all  true  human  progress 
and  genuine  reformation.  These  unchangeable  and 
enduring  standards  and  ideals  He  communicated  and 
made  over  to  His  Church,  which  He  empowered  with 
His  Divine  authority  to  speak  in  His  name  and  to 
coiivey  to  all  mankind  all  things  vhatsoever  He  had 
commanded  till  the  end  of  time.  In  this  Divinely 
established  religion  and  in  no  other,  men  possess  the 
grace  and  the  force  which  are  ever  directed  towards 
and  needed  for  the  reform,  the  uplift  and  the  sancti- 
fication,  not  only  of  the  individual,  but  of  society  at 
large.  If  humanity  would  be  led  aright  it  must  be 
led  by  men  imbued  with  the  spirit  and  the  teaching 
of  Christ^s  relrgion,  men  who  will  embody  in  their 
lives  the  perfection  of  virtue,  purity  and  sanctity  and 
who  will  by  word  and  example  proclaim  aloud  the  old, 
Divine,  immortal  principle  which  has  stood  the  test  of 
the  ages,  that  ''righteousness  exalteth  individuals  and 
nations." 

There  is  no  other  way  to  meet  the  problems  of  our 
civilization,  which  are  the  problems  of  every  other 
civilization  that  has  gone  before  us  or  will  come  after 
\!?.  and  to  determine  man  in  his  actions,  in  the  family. 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  365 

in  business  and  in  his  civic  relations  to  government. 
It  is  useless  to  perfect  our  institutions  unless  we  seek 
first  to  perfect  the  members  of  society.  Democracy 
will  not  save  men,  material  prosperity  will  not  save 
them,  nor  will  intellectual  or  artistic  progress  save 
society ;  only  the  effort  to  "grow  in  all  things  like  Him 
who  is  Oiur  head,  Jesus  Christ,"  will  save  the  indi- 
vidual and  save  mankind.  Without  Him,  who  "is  the 
Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life"  and  without  His 
religion,  which  upholds  and  preaches  His  standards 
and  ideals,  there  can  be  no  rejuvenatiqn  and  perfec- 
tion of  either  the  individual  or  of  society.  We  may 
organizfe,  systematize,  tabulate  and  use  all  the 
resources  known  to  the  boasted  science  of  the  period, 
but  all  will  be  useless  to  cope  wifh  the  modern  or 
the  prevailing  conception  of  human  nature;  the  mod- 
ern conception  of  man's  origin  and  destiny;  and  all 
the  other  fallacies  which  constitute  to-day  the  very 
essence  of  the  spirit  of  worldly  progress.  Perfec- 
tion based  on  this  conception  cannot  be  acquired. 

Human  nature  was  created  by  God  and  remains 
fixed.  God  is  a  necessity  for  us.  Our  hearts  are 
made  fctr  God  and  they  will  not  be  satisfied  until 
they  rest  in  the  love  and  knowledge  of  Him.  AH 
due  and  proper  perfection  begins  and  ends  in  Him 
to  whose  image  and  likeness  man  is  created.  Only 
those  peoples  are  truly  cultured  whose  impelling 
motive  is  the  perfection  of  the  individual  based  on 
this  conception ;  whereas  that  people  is  retrograde  in 
whom  there  is  wanting  a  proper  understanding  of  the 
dignity  of  man.  Before  our  days  people  have  turned 
their  back  on  God  and  reverted  to  the  decay  and  bar- 
barism that  followed  the  civilizations  of  Babylon  and 
Rome.  In  an  age  like  this,  when  everything  is  called 
in  question,  when  the  various  relations  of  life  are 
loose  and  undefined  and  when  the  very  air  is  preg- 
nant with  hostility  to  religion  we  cannot  but  look 
with  alarm  for  the  future  of  the  nations  if  they  go 
on  unchecked  in  their  course  of  pure  naturalism  and 
secularism,   indifiFerent  to   the   light  of   supernatural 


366  The  Facts  About  Luther 

faith  and  engrossed  in  striving  to  rise  above  the  natural 
by  purely  natural  means. 

Unrest,  agitation  and  widespread  discontent, 
inherited  from  the  religious  upheaval  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  prevail  throughout  the  world.  The  decadent, 
retrogressive  and  ruinous  policies  advanced  by  Martin 
Luther  and  upheld  by  his  followers,  distracted  society, 
divided  Christianity  and  alienated  thousands  from  the 
source  of  all  true  progress  only  to  lay  the  foundations 
of  an  atheism  which  is  eating  out  the  very  vitals  of 
all  social  and  Christian  life.  The  world  is  weary  of 
all  this.  It  needs  social  justice,  it  needs  mental  repose, 
it  needs  a  reform  of  inorals;  in  a  word,  it  needs 
religion.  There  can  be  no  real  peace,  unalloyed 
happiness  and  genuine  progress  until  it  is  brought 
back  to  the  first  principles  proclaimed  by  Mother 
Church  and  held  throughout  the  centuries ;  principles 
which  subdued  barbarism  and  tamed  savagery;  prin- 
ciples which  renewed  the  face  of  the  earth  and  spread 
knowledge,  civilization  and  contentment  among  the 
nations  of  the  universe ;  principles  which  gave  founda- 
tion to  human  society  and  established  peace  and  order 
by  the  wholesome  doctrine  of  authority  and  respect 
for  the  rights  of  all. 

Why  not,  then,  labor  to  make  the  world  Catholic,  so- 
ciety Christian  and  progress  permanent  by  imbuing  the 
people  with  the  knowledge  and  the  spirit  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount?  The  task  is  as  noble  as  it  is  just;  as 
great  as  it  is  full  of  reward  for  time  and  eternity. 
When  there  shall  prevail  the  tender  charity,  which 
Christ,  the  Founder  of  the  Church,  taught  and  exem- 
plified in  His  life  and  which  obliges  every  one  to  labor 
for  the  happiness  of  others  with  as  much  interest  as 
for  his  own,  this  earth  will  become  a  Paradise  and 
the  innumerable  woes  that  now  make  it  desolate — 
ambition,  avarice,  libertinism,  war,  fraud,  pauper- 
ism and  the  other  scourges,  mainly  the  effect  of 
our  vices — will  in  a  great  measure  disappear.  "To 
restore  all  things  in  Christ,"  as  the  great  apostle  Paul 
directs,  to  bring  about  the  grand  and  sublime  order  of 


Luther  as  a  Religious  Reformer  367 

things  so  much  desired  on  all  sides  and  to  promote 
the  welfare  of  society  and  our  salvation,  it  is  neces- 
sary for  all  to  be  on  guard  against  the  false  teacher 
and  his  destructive  principles  and,  come  what  will,  to 
remember  that  the  watchword  of  all  who  would  really 
and  sincerely  bring  about  reform  must  ever  be  the 
words  of  Christ,  the  true  Leader  of  men:  "Seek  ye 
first  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  His  Justice." 

May  He  Who  holds  in  His  hand  the  hearts  of  all 
and  Who  alone  knows  the  bounds  He  has  assigned 
to  the  rebellious  sects  and  to  the  afflictions  of  His 
Church,  cause  all  His  wanderers  soon  to  return  to 
His  unity !  Separation  from  His  Church  means, 
logically  and  practically,  no  Church.  No  Church 
means  no  Christianity.  No  Christianity  among  intel- 
ligent men  means  no  religion  at  all  and  no  religion 
means  ruin  to  the  souls  of  men  for  time  and  eternity. 


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